John Williams - Welcome to Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park Soundtrack) [HD]

Jurassic Park is the twelfth project on which renowned composer John Williams worked with Steven Spielberg. He composed, conducted and produced the score for the film. Most of the cues were orchestrated by John Neufeld, with two of those being partially orchestrated by Conrad Pope and with three others entirely orchestrated by Alexander Courage.
MCA Records released a soundtrack album for the film on May 20, 1993. Also produced by Williams, this album includes most of the film's major cues, sometimes edited together into longer tracks and often containing material that was not used in the film. Several passages are also repeated in different tracks.

Williams began writing the Jurassic Park score at the film at the end of February, and it was conducted a month later. John Neufeld and Alexander Courage provided the score's orchestrations. The composition was made in Skywalker Ranch simultaneously with the sound editing process, leading Williams to get inspiration from Gary Rydstrom's work with dinosaur noises. Williams described it as "a rugged, noisy effort - a massive job of symphonic cartooning", saying that while trying to "have to match the rhythmic gyrations of the dinosaurs" he created "these kind of funny ballets". Like with another Steven Spielberg film he scored, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Williams felt he needed to write "pieces that would convey a sense of 'awe' and fascination" given it dealt with the "overwhelming happiness and excitement" that would emerge from seeing live dinosaurs. In turn more suspenseful scenes such as the Tyrannosaurus attack earned frightening themes. It was the first time where Spielberg was unable to attend the recording sessions as he was in Poland filming Schindler's List. Williams just gave Spielberg demo tapes with piano versions of the main themes prior to his travel, and the director would hear them daily on the way to the sets.

Three major melodic ideas can be heard in this score. The first, known simply as "Theme from Jurassic Park", is introduced when the visitors first see the Brachiosaurus, and features "gentle religioso cantilena lines", which Williams declared was to try "to capture the awesome beauty and sublimity of the dinosaurs in nature." Another theme, "Journey to the Island", takes the form of a noble fanfare first heard as the helicopter approaches Isla Nublar; the composer described as an "adventure theme, high-spirited and brassy, thrilling and upbeat musically". Both of these themes are also used for quieter, more tender moments in the score, typically with woodwinds, horns, or keyboards. Williams stated that this reuse as a leitmotifs was for the pieces to become a theme for the park itself, "which could be used in several different places, and when orchestrated differently, could convey the beauty of what they were seeing at first."
The third major theme is very different from the first two. Comprising four menacing notes, it is heard frequently in scenes involving the threat of the carnivorous dinosaurs - the raptors in particular. The cue "Into the Kitchen" (entitled "The Raptor Attack" on the original soundtrack) explores this motif extensively, which draws inspiration from Williams' previous suspense music such as the Jaws theme, with "wild orchestral and choral things; the idea was to shake the floor and scare everybody." Williams described as "operatic in a dramatic way", and an opportunity to him to emphasize the "swashbuckling aspects of the orchestra".