John Williams wrote the music for the first Harry Potter film, based on J.K. Rowling’s novel.
Williams composed the score for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the 2001 film directed by Chris Columbus. Its most recognizable theme is “Hedwig’s Theme,” which became closely associated with the wider Harry Potter film series even though Hedwig is Harry’s owl and the character is not the musical theme’s subject in a literal narrative sense.
Williams also scored the next two films, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Other composers took over for later entries, including Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper, and Alexandre Desplat. This change can cause confusion when people attribute every Harry Potter film score to Williams.
The film was adapted from Rowling’s first novel and starred Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson. It was released in 2001, four years after the novel first appeared in Britain.