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Another week, another underappreciated aspect of the Rise of Skywalker score to explore. This time, let's talk about the big new villain theme, "Psalm of the Sith." (Better known as "Anthem of Evil" but I just cannot stomach that name!) My first two impressions of the theme were I love the wordless acapella statement on track 7 of the OST; closest we get in this score to the "Legend of Darth Plageuis" unreleased snippet from ROTS we all love... This is kind of just an ersatz Imperial March, more technically fluent but maybe not much more original than Giacchino's Imperial Suite themes... Since getting to know the score much better over the past few months, I've grown to appreciate the leitmotif quite a bit more, especially after revelations like what @Ludwig pointed out last week concerning its development in "Advice." It's treated quite flexibly over the course of the TROS soundtrack, seeping into many moments where the theme isn't necessarily at the forefront. There are also some new touches, harmonically, like the emphasis on the minor-triad immediately below the tonic (e.g. Cm <=> Bm) which is fairly rare in Star Wars and a nice alternative to the over-familiar Cm<=>Abm evil progression. My favorite part has got to be the explosive and well-rounded statement of the theme in its full glory during the End Credits. I especially enjoy the build-up starting at 2:06 (shades of the Force Theme's dotted rhythm) and, even more, the delightfully gothic middle section. This 10 measure span has got to be one of the best but least-remarked-upon aspect of this entire score. Here's a transcription. Could have come straight out of Dracula or The Chamber of Secrets. If anyone can discern even a passing hint of this B-section in the score proper, say so, I am just itching to add it to my thematic catalogue.

I'm so grateful that not only is he still scoring feature films this late in life and career, but that these late scores are all so good! It would be one thing if these new scores coming after 2005 (when he was freaking 73 already) were just OK-ish scores that are exciting for a little bit, then quickly forgotten... but for him to still be putting out so many bangers is astonishing and most welcome! Some of these newer scores I love so much more than some of his scores from his peak years. I will never blame him at all if he stops scoring features and just focuses on concert work, but I will be thrilled to no end if we find out he's scoring another feature!

Wasn't it rumoured that Palpatine's presence/resurrection originally didn't happen until later in the film? I know everyone's speculated ad nauseum about why Disney withheld basically all footage and artwork of the scenes on Exogol, lending credence to the theory that the film was significant reworked during production (not to mention the opening scene making no sense and coming across like a thoughtless rush-job). Vaguely recall early rumours that Kylo Ren's first visit to Exogol had him encountering a decrepit, unrecognizable man that would later be revealed as Palpatine. So perhaps Williams conceived this new villainous theme to use as an identity for this mysterious character, without giving away this true identity (which the Emperor's Theme obviously would)? Fast forward a few months and Disney's marketing team decided to reveal Palpatine in the marketing, thus negating any need to keep his character a secret in-film, and effectively rendering Williams' new theme pointless. A timeline of when he wrote cues would be helpful; we could identify whether all the heavily Emperor-focused cues were latter revisions. And don't forget lots of the Emperor material is tracked in from ROTS, indicating JW's original intentions didn't feature the theme. Off the top of my head, The Emperor Lives and Falcon Flight were late/revised cues, along with almost everything in reel 7. It looks very stitched together in the spectogram. Definitely not a legitimate concert suite (at least, not recorded as one, it seems like a combination of a bunch of stuff). The ending is definitely artificial, as you've identified, lending credence to the theory the track is partially 6M12 Six Twelve (the destruction of Kijimi) with a fake ending replacing the actual ending of the cue (which is partially heard in the film).

You kids! So demanding nowadays, with all your gadgets and your trinkets, your HD and your stereo! You’re never happy!

Same here:

Of all the new themes in TROS, I think this is the one that has the most to reveal in an expanded soundtrack release. I say this because of all the leitmotifs in the saga according to @Falstaft's catalogue, which is over 50 (considering B sections and such to be part of a single leitmotif), Anthem of Evil is the only one not to get a full statement somewhere in the film proper (i.e., not including end credits). Considering how the theme appears in the film (even with the score having been butchered), that says to me that there was a full statement and it was simply cut, omitting a vital part of the score, especially with regard to its meaning. The meaning of this theme as it is presented in the film isn't very clear because of this. I mean, in ANH, when Luke is introduced by his aunt calling "Luke! Luke!", we hear his theme on the horn - voila, the meaning is instantly clear. Nevertheless, I'm fairly certain that this is primarily a new theme for Palpatine in TROS, perhaps something like his influence, relationships, surroundings - that sort of thing - as opposed to just signifying Palpatine, which is old Emperor theme does quite well. The main places this theme shows up in TROS are when: Kylo flies to Exegol (though may be tracked or recomposed from when Rey flies to Exegol?) - someone was going to Exegol! After Kylo tells Rey she is a Palpatine Kylo tells Rey that the Dark Side is in both their natures A new Star Destroyer blows up Kijimi on Palpatine's order Rey arrives on Exegol And we also have the variations of it in "Advice" as Kylo decides to turn to good, which could be interpreted as him shedding not just evil generally but the pact he has with Palpatine, which has been driving his actions in the film. If we can look at the 3rd one above as probably an instance of Williams slightly expanding the meaning of his leitmotifs (as he so often does), it becomes clearer that the statements focus on Palpatine, either through Exegol, his bloodline, or his direct orders. It's still a bit hazy, I know, but we know how sensitive Williams is to finding a film's core and scoring to that. Vader's larger role in TESB prompted him to (thank goodness!) write him a new theme. The Emperor's important role in ROTJ prompted him to write a new theme for him. And those are the big baddies of those films, in other words, they are the ones who are really in charge pulling all the strings. Now we get to TROS and we find that Kylo really isn't the big baddie, nor was Snoke, but Palpatine. And interestingly, in TFA and TLJ, there wasn't one central villain in the way that TESB and ROTJ have one because of the relationships among Kylo, Snoke and Hux. But in TROS, within the first few minutes of the film, we get that scene at the Resistance base with Poe telling everyone that "somehow Palpatine has returned", making him the central evil of the film. And this is the kind of thing Williams is so adept at, honing in on a core feature of the narrative like that and carving out the main leitmotifs around it. So this is why I really look forward to hopefully learning more about this score and what Williams' original intentions were and at least more-or-less what he was scoring to in an earlier version of the film. But I'm certain that Anthem of Evil had a larger and/or more important role than what we hear in the final cut.

CD and CD&Bluray have arrived! Unboxing starting shortly. I'm in Germany: Lower Saxony south of Hannover.

Torturous, this is.

Official soundtrack release coming August 21!

Listen to this beauty! Jazzy baroque

Opinion, not fact.

No, I think the reverb is gorgeous. A perfect reflection of the baroque jazz melancholy of the score. It's not a sound that is suited to a 'dry' environment. Same applies to something like Roy Budd's GET CARTER. The reverb is almost part of the composition itself.

I've had Eiger for a couple of years now, I bought it in 2014 for about a quarter of what the going rate is today. I thought it was expensive back then... The music is jazzy and breezy. The score is mostly monothematic, but the main theme is great and it's fun to hear it in different arrangements. However, the meat of the score is in the cue Training With George. I can't go on enough about this track! It is one of my top 10 JW tracks of all time. I couldn't have imagined living without it, and not having it readily available in my collection, for the last 6 years. It is amazing.

Due to budget constraints the whole concert was recorded in 128 kbps mp3s. That was the compromise Deutsche Grammophon had to make, due to the fact that they chose gold embossing on the release. Can’t have it all, I guess! 🙃 . . . . . Nah man, just kidding! It’ll be lossless - even the vinyl! Maybe even more so than the digital formats! 😉

Vinyl has arrived!

1. Jack Nicholson 2. Anthony Hopkins 3. Ian Holm 4. Gary Oldman 5. Jeff Goldblum

Still a good egg, from the look of things.

Someone In The Dark

C3PO-coloured vinyl on its way, too. From Universal via DHL.

This time, just got a confirmation from DG Store that this https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/p51-i0028948391929/john-williams-wiener-philharmoniker-anne-sophie-mutter/john-williams-in-vienna-ltd-golden-2lp-/index.html is shipping Can't wait to receive both this and the Blu-ray

Nolan has always had notoriously boring posters. So nothing new there.

This is likely true now and a very good point. Physical media and its methods are going the way of practical effects. Weh!

It's so lossy that exterior and interior grooves can't exactly reproduce the same frequencies. You may call the sound "rich" indeed, if you find it "rich" that the sound of each groove bleed on the adjacent ones. Oh yes, it may produce a warmth sound, but at the end, it's distortion.

The human ear isn't lossless!

Nerds! Nice tablecloth, btw.

Rubbish. The Half-Blood Prince and especially Order of the Phoenix are terrific films.

Perhaps you're distant relatives.

Look! There they are! What did I tell yoooou! The best part was always Maria's very endearing intonation when she says "meee".

I refuse to use anything but the original titles!

For me, Stravinsky is the go-to composer whenever I want to listen to John Williams without actually listening to John Williams. Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich are pretty big inspirations as well. Holst, too, especially for the Star Wars scores.

Touch in cheek notwithstanding, I saw him conduct a summer concert in Cleveland in the late 90s. It was superb. The orchestra was fantastic, the location fantastic, the selection of music was fantastic (full JFK suite, Jane Eyre Suite, others).

Tried watching with this with the film and found the film practically unwatchable and shortly gave up. But I rediscovered some wonderful passages in the music. I think I'll revisit these scores soon. Great conversation though. Thanks Doug and Jim!

I feel so blessed to still be looking forward to Williams albums over twenty years after I started collecting them. I never thought he would have such a rich end to his career. When we lost him for three years after Sith and then practically another three after Crystal, I was worried that was it. Oh me, of little faith!

Is it sad that I am even excited to investigate this apparent mistake?

I'm working on it! What do you guys think about the implementation of dragons in this game? I think it's amazing. For about 120 hours of play, I occasionally saw them in the sky, and it was always awesome and magical every time: The music, looking up and seeing them carelessly gliding, etc. I thought that was all there was to them, honestly. Then one day, I'm way up north of Death Mountain. I had some quest that involved taking pictures of leviathan bones, and I saw some up there on the map. I took a picture, defeated the giant cache of tough enemies camped out inside it, looking around for stuff, etc. Was deciding whether to keep wandering or warp somewhere else, when ALL OF A SUDDEN, a GIANT DRAGON appears out of nowhere from the ground right next to me, and starts flying! I whip out my camera to snap a pic and see his name is Dinraal, which triggered something; I had recently been looking over my open quests and remembered one I had picked up 3 years ago,about putting Dinraal's scale down by a fountain. Well, I had no clue what that meant at all. But now finally seeing this guy's name, I whipped out my bow and fired off a shot at him , and something landed and I went and got it, and it was his scale! So I went to the spring and used it and got that shrine, which was cool. Cut to a few days later, I'm up in some area with a bunch of waterfalls and all of a sudden another dragon appears out of nowhere, I arrow it for another scale. That's when I realized the Spring of Power existing likely meant there was a Spring of Courage and a Spring of Wisdom too, but I had no idea where they were. Randomly, a few days later, I'm wandering in Hateno Village, and randomly find this farmer guy tending crops I had never managed to see in 130+ hours. He tells me something funny is going on with the mountain nearby and i should explore it, so i climb up there and when I get to the top, holy shit! There's a dragon covered in malice. Clearing all the malice by paragliding and taking them out was awesome, then afterwards it walks you through hitting it with an arrow to get a scale, and using that to unlock the fountain. Woops, I guess the game kinda meant I would have found this before the other ones! I dunno how I never found the guy who sent me on this question before. So now I gotta find the third spring, wherever that is, since I already have the right scale. Meanwhile, I only recently learned you can upgrade the damn Champion's tunic; I like throwing it on from time to time to see enemy HP, but now that I've actually been upgrading a lot of my armor sets, it low defense of 8 isn't practical. For some reason I thought you couldn't upgrade it, but I was hovering over every item last night see what I had to collect and saw it needs 2 freaking dragon horns to upgrade, so i gotta get farming...

1. Main Titles 7:48 2. Something Blows Up 2:38 3. Q Shows Bond Secret Laser Nose Ring 1:19 4. How Do You Intend To Kill Me Now, Mr. Bond? 3:38 5. Crappy Song 4:58 6. Bond Kills Some Bad Guys 5:02 7. Bond Breaks Into A Secret Hideout 1:29 8. 007 Song repraise 10:17 9. Bond Has Sex With Leading Female Actress 0:03 10. Bond Kills Villan In Over Elaborate Death Scene 6:28 11. Bond Has Sex With The Actress Again/End Credits 7:46 Justin -Who thinks DAD is going to be quite the Bond. The following track titles were taken from moviemusic.com and I give full credit to Mr. Justin Boggan lol.

The Towering Williams

Or it was a throwaway quote Rowling said in the moment and when asked to clarify it, she will totally invent something, pull something out of her ass and then pass it off as her original meeting.

I'm eager for Eiger.

Pikmin 3 Deluxe announced for Switch!!! https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/pikmin-3-deluxe-switch/

Over the last few days, every thread has been defiled by your 'humour'. It's annyoing.

*cue montage of Williams having a tourist day in London that includes trying to get a reaction out of a Queen's Guard*

I can't wait for his classic story - "This next piece is from the new Star Wars films. I recall J.J showing me the film, and Daisy was so mesmerising that I told J.J he needed a better Composer than me for this film, and he said 'I know, but Daisy's already dead.'"

Ludwig will most likely smile politely and think "I can't hear this dude."

I'm swimming.

Don't get clever, Sharky. You don't know him. Know him! Know him! You don't know him! You don't know him!

Morse code.

I've heard there will be an after party in JW's hotel suite. Arranged by Bill Ross. When on Friday will the general sale start?