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The underscore of Star Wars


Quintus

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I find it sounds and feels vastly different to ESB and RotJ. Why? What happened with JW between EpIV and EpV? We all know how great the action stuff is in Star Wars, but his scoring of moments like early on in the film with Luke at home with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, or when the Stormtroopers are searching for Luke and the droids in Mos Eisley and later with the Death Star scenes where Chewie is cuffed and escorted by Han and Luke, through to the moment where Obi Wan is powering down the tractor beam. The music is somewhat sparse in it's approach, consistently so. I don't mean a literal lack of music, because there obviously isn't; I'm instead referring to the actual writing and orchestration.

All of the quieter moments in SW are scored in a way in which the music merely evokes a sense of ambience and atmosphere - its mainly atonal stuff like soft timpani and deep, bassy strings; whereas by the time JW got to ESB he seemed to fully embrace the entire orchestra - fleshing out of the sequel's quieter moments with rich orchestrations of melodic and rhythmic underscore. Why the change? Did he have more time to write? Did he grow in confidence considerably after the success of Star Wars? The answer to the latter is almost certainly a yes of course.

I'm not at all criticising JW's 'sparse' underscore style in the first movie; because I in fact love those more subtle musical moments dearly and I'm glad they are the way they are. I'm merely stating that I find it interesting how I was never able to hear that brand of JW ever again after he completed his score to Star Wars.

The first score sounds like it's own entity; almost separate to the other movies in the saga and in some ways I think it it remains the best SW score as a direct result.

I think it's the best too!

I thought the underscore in star wars sounded more "classical" almost like something that would be written by 1700's/1800's composers.

And ROTJ's underscore is (somewhat) boring.

Add one more century to the 1800's and you've got it.

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But another question, I think it is interesting for all members: What does John Williams think about? Which Star Wars score he considers as his best?

Suffice it to say that he is consumed by this very question.

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EBS is so different that I don't even like it. It's too big, too nervous, too sweeping, too suffocating, too much of everything. Star Wars is a score. EBS is an "overscore".

Alex

yeah whatever Alex

Edit, what?I'm replying to something 3 years old?

well here's my original reply then

EBS is so different that I don't even like it. It's too big, too nervous, too sweeping, too suffocating, too much of everything. Star Wars is a score. EBS is an "overscore".

Alex

i've just lost all respect in any of your opinions

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Might as well ask here then - why exactly is reviving an older thread such a bad thing? Just because something hasn't been discussed for a while doesn't mean it's an invalid discussion.

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Sometimes its appropriate to bump an old thread and keep a discussion going. Sometimes its appropriate to just start a new thread and start a fresh discussion of an old topic.

It all depends.

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  • 3 months later...

Personally I prefer the score for RotJ better than Star Wars or ESB. The Emperor's Theme, Luke and Leia, all three of the Battle of Endor sequences have the best music in it of the three, imo.

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Nothing wrong with that. Jedi has loads more music, it's very exotic and there's also more going on thematically. It certainly brings a lot to the table. I've always liked it, anyway.

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The score to Star Wars is a lot simpler than RotJ. But I think that's part of why I like RotJ more. That and the music is just so intense especially during the final confrontation on-board the Death Star II. All of the music that goes on during those scenes is some of the scariest, darkest, most intense emotionally rich music in all 6 of the SW movies, not to mention just the first three.

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There's a complexity in the sequels. They do take us into deeper territory.

Star Wars has an innocence to it, this ability to separate it from the rest (as with the movie itself). Less themes (see: whimsical stuff for the droids, sinister brooding stuff for Vader), less scoring, none of the attached baggage of the whole "saga" thing. That playful rendition of the rebel fanfare when Vader flies off the movie at the end is something that Williams would never have composed in the sequels.

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I agree. There is more innocence and playfulness in both the music in Star Wars and the movie itself. In fact, all 5 of the other movies in the series, even with the innocence portrayed in The Phantom Menace, all had some sort of sinister undertone to them. Star Wars never really had that, which is why it tends to feel a bit out of place when you're watching a SW marathon. lol

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TESB is part of his "dark" and gloomy period of orchestration, with stuff like The Fury, Dracula and Raiders... heavy and melodramatic underscoring, It's the way he wrote stuff in that era post-SW but pre-ET.

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I looooooooooove that era of Williams. :) Raiders and ESB are two of my favorite scores of all time. They have a slightly more modern feel than his work from the 70s, but they're not as light as some of his scores got later in the 80s. Sheer perfection.

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  • 2 years later...

The score to Star Wars is a lot simpler than RotJ. But I think that's part of why I like RotJ more. That and the music is just so intense especially during the final confrontation on-board the Death Star II. All of the music that goes on during those scenes is some of the scariest, darkest, most intense emotionally rich music in all 6 of the SW movies, not to mention just the first three.

Agreed.

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