John Williams for Piano, from Memorabilia to the Concert Hall

This article surveys the arrangement and publication of piano excerpts from John Williams’s film scores across his career. Situating them in the context of a longer tradition of domestic music-making, it assesses their suitability as musical texts for study and their artistic and technical value as pieces for private and public performance, arguing for the complementarity of these two functions. This article also examines the material value of these publications as promotional objects and collectibles, showing how their production style, content, and technical difficulty reflect the ups and downs of music publishing and of public interest in film music over the past half-century. Despite having offered amateur musicians alternate ways of engaging with John Williams’s music, these arrangements have not yet received scholarly attention.