Ludwig

I'd say that in ANH, the figure in the accompaniment that comes in before the theme is based on the Force theme itself, a kind of outline of it that even uses the same notes: A-Bb-D (see the boxes I've drawn in the music below). Williams also transposes the figure so it has a version that ends on G (the tonic) as well, so it doesn't get too repetitive. It isn't unheard of for Williams to do this in his golden-era Star Wars scores, either. What @Falstaft calls Heroic Descending Tetrachords, which generally ushers in Luke's Theme, is a faster version of the same figure from the B sec

Why so doubtful? They are Matessino's liner notes after all...

The liner notes from the 1997 Special Edition of A New Hope's soundtrack says of Newman's fanfare, And I think that makes the most sense. Lucas had already drawn together influences from old serials, samurai films, westerns, and sci-fi, and he knew he wanted the music to be like the old Hollywood scores of the 30s and 40s, so it fits neatly with that whole creative vision.

It's fine if you're looking for a solid recording of the music. IMHO, the OST is superior though because it has a punchier sound in the slightly faster tempos and closer mics, which means less reverb on the sound than the rerecording. Just little things, really. They're not night-and-day differences.

Ha! I thought you might ask that since we talked about this cue's origins here. Yes, your theory seems likely, I would say, because from what Williams said in that interview you cited here earlier this year, it sounds like he meant that he only had Luke's theme and had to assemble or compose the rest for the main title. So he imported the Throne Room's B section as the main title B section, then probably wrote the opening fanfare at that point as well. What's really interesting is that the fanfare sounds a lot like the Rozsa Ivanhoe opening that was used for the temp of the main ti

Hi all, Here's the second video in my series on John Williams themes, this one on the Star Wars main title. It argues that one of the reasons the cue is so powerful is that it's highly unified by melody, harmony, and rhythm. Enjoy, and if you like it, please subscribe!

Hi all! Film Music Notes will now be offering videos of some of our most popular blog posts on our very own YouTube channel. Here is the first video, analyzing John Williams’ Force theme from the Star Wars saga. If you like the video and would like to see more of them, just click the YouTube logo on the video, then hit the Subscribe button in YouTube!

I'm with you, @Jay, and @Falstaft. I don't think the Elegy theme is in those last 2 examples. Generally, I'd say when Williams wants to make reference to a theme, he's pretty darn clear about it. Sure, we've seen examples where he's not, like the use of Anthem of Evil in "Advice", but that's really the exception, one that seems tied to him "putting a bow" on his final SW score, as he himself said. And there wouldn't be much point in being really subtle in thematic references anyway since the whole point is for the audience to gain a better understanding of what's going

The Ludlow motif is different from other themes because it lacks an explicit association. It's more of a basic outline, something like Horner's danger motif, that can be hammered into different but closely-related shapes for a generalized feeling of tension. Call this one a different name if you like. The point is that its notes follow the same outline as the other things we call the Ludlow motif. This one, being slower, is like the Desperation motif from TLJ, which is also Ludlow-based. And even with that theme, the association is much more vague than with other themes, following

Isn't this Williams' beloved Ludlow Motif, or what @Falstaft in his catalogue calls "Tension"? There, @Falstaft notes another instance of it in "Hallway Shooting" from TROS, so it's elsewhere in the score. It's kind of cool how at 2:05 and 2:22, it appears over a single chord like usual, but then at 2:32, it appears a third time, now each note of the motif harmonized with a different chord, sounding twisted and forced into a new mould.

What impresses me the most about this theme in TROS is how expressively flexible it is. Yes, Falcon Flight is awesome. And it seems part of a larger approach to varying the emotional quality of the theme. So we get the expected old-time creepy statements and big climactic statement we heard with the original in ROTJ, and in Falcon Flight, we get it as an action theme, but there's more to it than even those. The scoring often has a quality of expressing the evil "from afar", meaning not by Palpatine himself because the low bassoon/cello/chorus combination is substituted with somethi

Might it have sounded like this? "Sir Francis and the Unicorn" from Tintin works amazingly well (even with my couple of small edits)!

What's incredible to me is that Williams wrote the score to ANH thinking this was going to be just a one-off adventure movie, and nevertheless was able to write not one but TWO themes that would become musical symbols of the saga as a whole - Luke's theme and the Force theme. In that sense, these themes became bigger than themselves. And even in the first film, this happens with Luke's theme pretty much immediately with its effectiveness as a bold, brassy main theme, and the Force theme through its malleability to take on a host of different, though related, meanings. And along the

Hi all. Thought you might be interested to read my latest blog post (the first in a while!). What makes Ennio Morricone's style of scoring for Sergio Leone's westerns so great? I take a crack at this in my new blog post series. Here's part 1: https://www.filmmusicnotes.com/ennio-morricones-dollars-scores-part-1-of-3-a-fistful-of-dollars/

For me, one thing I love about this score is the way Williams develops not just the themes but melodic snippets that aren't necessarily leitmotifs. "Farewell" is a great demonstration of this. There, he introduces this tiny little rising semitone figure at the end of Kylo/Ben's leitmotif: 1:10-1:13: It seems like an unimportant detail at first, but then he uses it again and again (sometimes a rising whole tone instead of a semitone). I'd say it represents a kind of lamenting sound given we've just had the death of Rey and Ben coming over to grieve then try and