Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the film score to the 1981 Steven Spielberg film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The music was composed and conducted by John Williams, and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Orchestrations were done by Herbert W. Spencer with additional orchestrations done by Al Woodbury. The score was released by Columbia Records in June 1981. The soundtrack received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score, but lost out to Vangelis' score for Chariots of Fire. Composition Williams said that the music did not have to be serious for the film and was instead theatrical and excessive. Williams spent a few weeks working on the Indiana Jones theme, more commonly known as "The Raiders March" that plays during the main character's heroic scenes. Two separate pieces were played for Spielberg, who wanted to use both. These pieces became the main theme and musical bridge of "The Raiders March". A picture disc vinyl LP of "The Raiders March" was released by Walt Disney Records in 2021. For the romantic theme, Williams took inspiration from older films like the drama Now, Voyager (1942) to create something more emotionally monumental that he felt would contrast well with the film's humor and lighter moments. Williams used "dark" orchestral pieces to represent the actions of the Nazis, using the "seventh degree on the scale of the bottom". He said this signified a militaristic evil. To create something suitably biblical for the Ark of the Covenant, he used a mix of chorus and orchestra. Track listing