Jump to content

Is Across The Stars an "epic lovetheme" reworking of the Star Wars main theme?


Is Across The Stars an "epic lovetheme" reworking of the Star Wars main theme?  

13 members have voted

  1. 1. Is Across The Stars an "epic lovetheme" reworking of the Star Wars main theme?



Recommended Posts

Not quite.

 

Doug Adams has explained that its kind of a meshing together of the main titles theme, which belongs to Luke, and Leia's theme: It starts with an interval between the intervals of those two themes, and continues from there with connections to both themes throughout. It certainly seems to me like its closer to Luke's theme than it is to Leia, but I wouldn't say its an outright variation on either - its just connected to them.

 

There's also that ominous sounding end-cap in the unabridged theme (e.g. the concert presentation) that sounds to me like it could also be connected to the Imperial March. Its also one of the gestures in Williams body of work which is said to quote Dies Irae, although it might not be entirely delieberate here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

According to Adams:

 

Quote

"Across the Stars" is kind of a...combination of the main title [thematic] material, which is sort-of the Luke material.[...]Its that combined with Leia's theme.[...]Essentially, in Luke's theme, the most common interval is a fifth, in the beginning [of the theme...]Leia's theme is a sixth apart.[...]"Across the Stars begins with the leap that's directly between those two intervals[...]and then its got all these little sort of descending triplet figures that are derived from Luke's theme, the bridge has a lot of subtle references to some of the gestures from Leia's theme.[...]you begin with this one theme that has these different specfic types of leaps and descending figures and a little bit of chromaticism and those sort of begin together and than pull apart ot create those two different themes: Luke's theme and Leia's theme, eventually.

- Inteview on "The Cantina Cast", 177; minute 33:38 ff.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are a lot of "stock" musical phrases that Williams repeats over and over again throughout his work, often among scores that are otherwise unrelated to each other. I don't think he does this intentionally; I think there's only so many original melodies one person's mind can come up with that are completely distinct. There's a phrase from Across the Stars repeated in Fawkes' theme, which had already been used in Hook, etc. etc.

 

Across the Stars has always reminded me of the main title, but I don't think Williams actually INTENDED for it to be a variation on the main title, or any other existing Star Wars themes. I think he was trying to write something completely new and it just turned out that way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

There are a lot of "stock" musical phrases that Williams repeats over and over again throughout his work, often among scores that are otherwise unrelated to each other. I don't think he does this intentionally; I think there's only so many original melodies one person's mind can come up with that are completely distinct.

 

That's generally very true of assesing large-scale leitmotivic works, yes. Over so many hours of music, some generic sequences of notes are bound to recur even without the composer trying to create a recurring motif.

 

But in this particular case, I don't think Adams is too off of the mark. Its true that Williams doesn't compose thematic material in sets and subsets of related motives, in the way that Wagner or Shore do, but he does nevertheless forge occasional connections between many of his themes.

 

This is especially true for the prequels, where Williams had an inkling as to what was going to happen in a way he never had on any of his projects, so he could embed the Imperial March in Anakin's theme, and do the same with Luke and Leia's themes in Across the Stars.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

Across the Stars has always reminded me of the main title, but I don't think Williams actually INTENDED for it to be a variation on the main title, or any other existing Star Wars themes. I think he was trying to write something completely new and it just turned out that way.

 

Possibly you're correct, but personally I think there are too many similarities between the two for it to be be a pure coincidence. If you line up the two pieces next to each other, and compare the characteristic figures in both (especially the descending and rising triplets), you see that they occur in almost exact parallel. You don't get this if you compare the main title with Hook, or Fawkes' theme. 

 

That said, I think Adams' theory about the interval "meeting in the middle" between Luke's theme and Leia's theme is a stretch...if that's what Williams was intending then, you'd think he'd do it for "Luke & Leia" and not "Across the Stars". And anyway, who watching the film is going to notice that? I think Williams chose that minor sixth mainly because it's a beautiful interval, not because he derived it "from without".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's true, Across the Stars and the main title line up very well, but I can think of at least one other example of this... Schindler's and Harry Potter. I think we can agree those weren't meant to be thematically linked. If Williams was consciously influenced by the main title at all when writing Across the Stars, I would guess it was only in terms of trying to write music that sounded "like Star Wars".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Smeltington said:

If Williams was consciously influenced by the main title at all when writing Across the Stars, I would guess it was only in terms of trying to write music that sounded "like Star Wars".

 

I agree with this! In as much as I think that Williams was simply trying to spin out a "love theme" from the materials present in the main theme (maybe :)).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.