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The Empire Strikes Back is probably my favorite score and I have always wanted to study it in depth. The sketches are floating around but are cryptic and difficult to read due to extremely small handwriting, short score conventions, parts switching staves, and the fact that it was designed to quickly get the ideas on paper rather than readability. I have some downtime so thought I would typeset the music. My first effort is “R12P1 - Losing a Hand”. Typesetting this music has made me reach a few conclusions since it forces detailed examination of everything on the sketch: 1. Being an orchestrator for John Williams must be the easiest job in the world. All the details are already in the sketch. Not just the notes but also the phrasing, dynamics, string bowings, the voicings, instrumental doublings, hairpins, percussion, ornaments, etc. It is actually unnecessarily detailed. Just by typesetting the music as JW sketched it, the music we hear in the final recording is clearly revealed. This is a far cry from most working composers today who either use samples or extreme short cuts (to be kind). 2. JW likes parallel harmonies, chord substitutions, sequences and many other classical and jazz techniques influences. Basically he is extremely fluent musically in a wide range of techniques deployed with skill and craftsmanship (yes, I knew this before). 3. There are mistakes in the sketch but they are obvious. For example, in vader’s Imperial march, there was a note indicated as F natural that should be an F#. What he has in the sketch seems to have been fixed in the recording but any professional orchestrator would have caught this minor error I am sure. Occasionally there are missing accidentals or a missing beat, but this in no way detracts from the quality of the score it is just so massively accomplished. 4. I used to hear a pretty big style evolution between “Star Wars” and “Empire Strikes Back” but see that “Empire” is more of a direct evolution than I previously thought. The strange music at the start after Luke looses his hand and before Vader says "I am your father" reminds me of the music when Ben Kenobi was deactivating the tractor beam. 5. Interestingly, tempo is not indicated but rather timings are. This means that he didn’t conduct statically but conducted in musical gestures as long as they lined up at important moments with pops and streamers. This results in a more “operatic” quality with molto rubato. The phrases are sometimes stretched or compressed though it still lines up at important moments. I can imagine this was a complex recording to perform. 6. There are a lot of great melodies that only appear for specific events – for example, what is the “dramatico” theme in the horns at bar 44 when Luke is hanging under cloud city? Where did that come from? It is a great theme but isn’t heard before and not related to another theme as far as I can tell. Empire is full of that and I just love the pedal and how this all gradually evolves from dramatic to heroic. I wonder why JW didn't just use a tragic version of the Luke theme here rather than something entirely new? It takes me about one hour to typeset a full page of sketch which consists of two 8 bar staves. The music is very tiny and extremely thoroughly detailed and I am trying to capture it all with reasonable results. Next I will either try to tackle “Hyperspace” or “Clash of the Lightsabers” two favorites of mine since I first saw the film in 1980. We already have some of the other music such as “Han Solo and the Princess”, “The Asteroid Belt”, “Yoda” but were missing a lot of the final dramatic musical moments. I hope to have the entire third act typeset in a month or two. So this would be everything starting with “Carbon Freeze” to the end. Score and MP3 (not realistic quality, just a straight output from Sibelius so don't get too hung up on sound quality) can be downloaded here.

Eric Serra wrote the best Bond score. End of discussion!

I just think most of his work sounds generic and he doesn't know how to propely use that 60s John Barry sound. His music also doesn't feel like a logical progression of where Bond music had been going prior. John Barry himself had moved on away from what he did in the 60s. Even the progression seen in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE to ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE shows that his music was evolving, but Arnold insisted on bringing back that early 60s sound and at inappropriate moments. I'm thinking of bits like when the new airline in CR is leaving the hangar during the Miami Airport sequence, and Anrold scores that bit with blaring horns. It comes off awkward, much like the way he overused the Bond theme in the Brosnan films. TOMORROW NEVER DIES for example used the Bond theme more or less fifteen times, and for unremarkable moments like Bond simply driving to the government house. That kind of use of the Bond theme not only makes the film feel more like a paorody but that it also marginalizes the theme as if it wasn't something special. He doesn't use the theme as much in CR, which was refreshing, but nothing new is being brought to the table, which he promised back when CR started pre-production that it would introduce "a new sound". I suppose that "new sound" is simply ommitting the Bond theme, because for the most part it sounds like what we've already gotten in the Brosnan films. But to give Arnold credit, he actually put out some good stuff in QUANTUM OF SOLACE. I have to assume this is due to Marc Forster actually involving himself more in the scoring process bringing something out of Arnold that we would have never heard earlier. Arnold still falls into the same generic trap at times like with "The Palio", but then he does something interesting like taking the Vesper theme from CR and actually improving it in "What Keeps You Awake" and "I Never Left". They not only work nice, but that they actually compliment the scenes they cover. As much good as he did in QOS, I was relieved that somebody else was going get a crack at Bond. Arnold had done five Bond scores in a span of a decade, I think it's time to just let him go for good. At least he'll always have John Singleton and Michael Apted to fall back on.

I guess its time for the JWFans to move out and let the HSFans and Bond fans take over now!

Right, I got it from that site. Will revise the analysis and sketch later. My conclusion: it sure would be nice to have a Douglas Adams "Lord the Rings" treatment of the Star Wars music. There are just so many primary and secondary ideas and not always clear if there is a connection.

"I disagree, boy!"

Glorified video game.

From the author of the Pixar Universe Theory comes..... The "Emily is Andy's Mom" theory! http://moviepilot.com/posts/2014/02/24/the-true-identity-of-andy-s-mom-makes-toy-story-even-more-epic-1247874