Ludwig

The statement of the Rebel Fanfare with Vader after the explosion can be misinterpreted if viewed out of context. The theme is more than just a "good guy" theme, it's more of a "good guys in trouble" theme. This is how it appears in most statements in the film, especially the most prominent ones like in the opening sequence or as the Falcon gets caught in the Death Star's tractor beam. There are one or two statements where it appears with the good guys alone, like after the big Force theme statement in the binary sunset scene, but these only reinforce its good-guy association. With all this in mind, hearing it with Vader spin out of control at the end would only suggest how the Rebels have struggled against him, not that it somehow signifies the Empire. By the way, in the liner notes to the original LP for Star Wars, Williams identifies several "themes" from the score: those for Leia, Luke, Ben, and the Death Star, but he also identifies a theme for Vader (by which I presume he means the music with Vader's entrance) and the Jawas. It's strange that he doesn't mention the Rebel Fanfare or the Imperial Motif (or even the Stormtroopers' music) but does mention music that probably doesn't register as a theme for most here (Vader) and another span of music that, while fulfilling the criterion of returning in the score, isn't one of the film's most prominent themes (Jawas). This is why the saga could really use a clear and comprehensive, Doug-Adams-style treatment of all its themes.

This is one of my top cues as well. As usual, Williams enlists several musical techniques in the service of painting a very clear emotional expression. The combination of techniques in the theme is, to my knowledge, rather unique, which is partly why it stands out for me. These techniques include: - a slowly wandering chord progression - one that starts clearly "on the ground" but quickly (and imperceptibly) migrates into very remote territory - a melody based largely on consonance and broken chords in a major key - this gives the theme a kind of "pure" or "virtuous" quality - a slowly rising contour to the melody - an obvious point that lends the music a "heavenly" quality, especially given the very high register of the violins - a subtle bass line that moves only by steps or small skips - provides a kind of "rationality" to the "irrational" chord progressions; it reminds me of the famous "magic sleep" passage from Wagner's Die Walküre, where Brünnhilde is being put into her magical slumber by her father Wotan and the same sort of technique can be heard: All this is to say that, for the music of the Ballroom Scene, Williams blends these techniques together to create a theme that sounds like someone falling under an emotional "spell" that leads them into something (apparently) pure and heavenly, and even though the way they got there was rather strange, it sounds as though it makes some sort of sense (as though in a dream, where the irrational is made rational). It's not the techniques per se that distinguish this cue, but their seamless blend which directs us very clearly to this kind of emotional expression. Such a brilliant cue - can't believe it wasn't used!

Hi MovieMorty. After listening to the two passages you cite, I think what you might be hearing in both is an unusual progression from a form of the iii chord to the major bVII chord a tritone away. In "Leaving Home", the progression is between 1:47-1:51 and would be analyzed in E major as V7 / vi - bVII or if thought of more in relation to the home key, more like III7 - bVII In Horner's "The Place Where Dreams Come True", the progression is between 4:44-4:48 and would be analyzed in G major as: iii - bVII It's funny you seem to be pointing out this progression, because I've long noticed it in a couple of places in Morricone. In "The Carriage of the Spirits", from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it occurs in 1:25-1:33: again analyzed as iii - bVII (this time in Bb major) And in "The Man with the Harmonica" from Once Upon a Time in the West, from 1:36-1:48: Here, though, it's in a minor key (A minor), and the first chord is diminished rather than major or minor, so it would be analyzed as: ii7 (no 5th) - bVI This last example has a hauntingly fateful air to it, especially when that bVI chord moves to V in 1:48. The other examples, though, are all in major keys and move to a bVII chord. When combined with the root motion by a tritone, it creates for me (and I suspect for you too) a feeling of transforming something rather negative into something extremely positive, perhaps explaining the profound effect it seems to have.

Probably something very similar to the opening of Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, which I would guess was the model Shore had in mind. See the notation (animated!) below:

Yes, or you could go with raised mediant chord since it might be a bit funny to refer to a sharp when the note is actually a natural. Either way, despite the fact that you don't need to say "minor", I'd probably clarify with a little parenthesis, like: "the raised mediant chord (A minor)", or something similar.

Most analysts would probably call this the sharp mediant, in contrast to chords like the flat mediant. The "minor" adjective would be understood. And most write the Roman numerals as being diatonic in key of the passage, so the sharp mediant would be notated as #iii. If it was the sharp mediant major, for example, it would be written as #III and you'd specify the "major" when referring to it in the text.

I think it's actually a diatonic cluster in C minor from Eb up to Ab with a low C as the bass. In other words, (if C4 is middle C), C2-Eb3-F3-G3-Ab3. The F is hard to hear but is most audible when the chord stops playing and the sound is still reverberating at 1:26. So the chord would have the same sound as an F minor triad combined with a C minor triad, but because those chords aren't separated by register, it would be more of a cluster than a polychord.

I'll PM you so as not to derail the thread!

I found the following thread useful in trying to get at the change we were hearing between the OT vs. the PT, so the OP (and others) may find this useful as well:

Thanks, karelm. Just been really, really busy, but good. I hope I might have more time to contribute here in the future!

The problem there is that 6/8 has only two beats per bar whereas Williams' notated 2/4 bars actually have three because the music is never allowed to settle into a pattern of two beats per bar. I believe the 2/4 is only there to make its relationship to the preceding 3/4 as simple as possible. In other words, leave the notated quarter at roughly the same speed (it's only a hair slower with the new metronome marking of 108 to the quarter rather than 100 of the preceding section), and subdivide two quarter beats into three, hence the triplet brackets. As I say, it looks inelegant but I think it's actually a good way to communicate the relationship clearly and quickly.

I'm fairly certain it has to do with the rhythmic relationship between the 3/4 and 2/4. That is, at the 2/4, half notes are now divided into three beats rather than two, giving the feeling of shifting to triplets as notated. Yes, he could have kept the 3/4 and simply written a relationship of the half note in the old 3/4 equaling the dotted half note in a new 3/4, but that's something you'd have to think about for a few seconds to comprehend the change. The way it is, it's perhaps not the most elegant solution with all the triplet brackets everywhere, but it is grasped immediately as a motion into triplets on the same half note lengths.

I suppose I don't feel that a passage has to have a single, linear precedent, especially with techniques that do not derive from a single composer the way, say, twelve-tone music does from Schoenberg. Probably better to go more broadly by types of music in particular historical periods, and even then, it's hard to say. So all those composers you name certainly had an impact in making the modal sound a part of early 20th-century concert music, which is what I mean by types in historical periods. But then, Williams' background in jazz may also be part of the answer since modes are a huge part of a jazz musician's musical materials. I know you're looking for the overall "sound" and BotH isn't jazz, but I think we must also leave a heap of room for Williams' own creativity. Parsing his music into segments that all derive from a general precedent does not allow for the distinctiveness and recognizability of Williams' style. What's fascinating to me is not from where his techniques derive but how he manages to make them sound fresh and new despite their prior use.

It may be that I didn't justify enough why I hear these relationships. Far from being merely random, the similar notes I point out actually have much in common: 1) They are all in the same key (which is especially significant in Williams, where keys of themes tend not to be consistent). 2) They all outline a descent through the same scale degrees, from 3 down to 7, with stepwise motion filling in most or all the gaps. 3) These scale degrees 3 and 7 form the high and low boundaries within their respective spans, making those notes more prominent than they would otherwise be. And perhaps most importantly, 4) They all involve the flat 7 scale degree rather than the generally more typical raised 7, giving these themes the distinctive sound of the Aeolian mode rather than the more common sound of the harmonic minor. These things considered together with the associations the various themes have only strengthens these connections. Now of course the connections I'm arguing for here are more difficult to hear than the others in these analyses, and that's primarily because they involve similarities in pitch structure rather than in rhythm or harmony, which are more common for film music themes. But just because a relationship may be hard to hear does not mean that we should dismiss it as not being there at all. After all, looser relationships do exist elsewhere in the Star Wars scores. Take the snippet after the Death Star explodes in ANH, from 8:38-8:45 below: I would call this a transformed reference to the end of the Rebel Fanfare, the beginning of which then enters on its heels in its normal form. Or how about that theme that enters after Vader has frozen Han on Cloud City, what I've called "Vader Succeeding"? I'd call that a transformed reference to the Imperial March: Or how about the similarities between Luke's theme and Across the Stars I point out in the part 5 of these analyses?: http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/celebrating-star-wars-themes-part-5-of-6-across-the-stars/ What I'm advocating for is getting at a kind of subconscious connection between various themes rather than a more obvious leitmotivic kind of referencing.

A small but important clarification: in Scott Murphy's notation of "MnM," the first M represents the tonic regardless of whether it is first or second in the progression. So the situation you're citing would actually be M8M, not M4M. Though this may seem pedantic, it is an important distinction because some relationships are much more common than others. The Vader riff, for example, or m8m (Gm-Ebm), is exceedingly common in film whereas its inverse, m4m (say, Gm-Bm, where G is tonic) is quite rare. The brilliance of this notation is that the order of the chords in the music doesn't matter, only the tonic does, which is how we tend to hear triadic progressions after all.

What Steef says about ignoring people without credentials is simply not true - certainly not for me. I saw this but haven't had time to devote to it. I thought someone else would comment, but didn't probably because of what Data said. I agree with Data - it's similar to Across the Stars, but not a reference. You'll notice what's missing is the drop down of a 6th (the fourth note of the motif you cite from Across the Stars). Without that, it's really not the same figure since that's such a memorable part of that motif. For motifs (or dare I say themes), there should be enough of a resemblance to say "yes, that's definitely the same thing" rather than, "well maybe". Motifs are a bit like names - you can recognize them if they're characteristic portions are retained, like how "Liz" and "Beth" are both characteristic parts of "Elizabeth". But "Eli" not so much since that could be part of several other names. The Torn Apart motif strikes me as more of an "Eli" rather than a "Liz".

A huge thanks to Faleel for completing this mammoth amount of work - a fantastic resource that will serve everyone very well!

I don't want to bicker about defining things that are not the same because we are actually describing different (though overlapping) concepts. What Inky and Data are describing are leitmotifs, which are generally foregrounded and recurring - that is, they are quite obvious. What I'm talking about are any characteristic passages that might be interpreted as having associative meaning, regardless of whether it recurs or lies in the background. I would emphasize that because this is a matter of interpretation that, again, we are talking about different things. I'm talking about interpreting the final product - the film itself - regardless of whether the composer or filmmakers intended something to come across or not. To discuss compositional intent is something quite different. All this is to say that studying "themes" can be defined as something apart from leitmotifs and compositional intent.

The thing is that the terms we use to describe concepts are fundamental to the way we understand them. Even the distinction of having to be heard more than once is not part of the definition for some - Faleel's list demonstrates that. If we make that distinction, then a theme like the Cantina Band is not a theme, which feels odd given its prominence in the film. Then there is Qui-Gon's funeral music, which appears once in TPM, so one might say it's not a theme, but then it reappears in ROTS, so it might somehow become a theme at this point - that feels odd too. But this is straying from the point - theme or not, the question is whether the melody heard at the start of "The Podracer Roars to Life" has associative meaning or whether it simply has more of an emotional function. My vote is a definite yes, but we are in the realm of interpretation here, and with something as subtle as this, there is no real right or wrong.

I'll second Faleel on this - I do think this is a theme that carries significance in the narrative. The moment when the podracer starts up is directly connected to the relationship between Anakin and Shmi as she looks lovingly on him, having succeeded at making the racer functional. The thing about these prequel scores is that themes (which, for me and I think Faleel too, means the use of characteristic melodies or figures that potentially have a focused association with the narrative) are frequently used far more subtly than in the original trilogy. So a bit of melody often operates at more in the background than the foreground as in much of the OT's themes. All I'm saying is that it's easy to dismiss these snippets in the prequels as nothing of significance. But when the context in the film is considered, it becomes much harder to do so, IMO. This is a case where I think the connection is pretty clear, but that's just me.

Double nominations in the Best Original Score category have occurred 13 times in Oscar history since 1946, when they reduced the number of nominees down to five (before that, there were twenty, so it doesn't mean the same thing). Only twice have these doubly-nominated composers actually won - Williams, of course for Star Wars in 1977 (beating his nomination for Close Encounters), and Desplat last year for Grand Budapest Hotel (beating his nomination for The Imitation Game). Ironically, though, Williams has lost 7 times in years when he was double nominated, most recently in 2011 for War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin. I've decided that, per se, I don't think a double nomination means a damn thing in terms of decreasing a composer's chance of winning. It seems to me that, apart from other circumstances (like past snubs, a sympathy vote, etc.), the Academy does not vote based on the composer, but rather their perception of the music in the film and the prestige of the film it's attached to. I say this because in the vast majority of cases, the film containing the winning score is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, or very often both. And since I started analyzing the nominees in detail in 2013, I can say that the winners were definitely scores that were, in one way or another, extremely memorable.

Sharky's quote of Williams implies what I was going to respond with, which is that I think these resemblances have to do with linking the themes together generally rather than to the Force theme specifically. Put another way, there's no reason to hear the Force theme as being the reference behind all these similarities. That might be true if there were more features linking these other themes to it, in the way that Rey's theme is clearly modelled on it, but there just aren't. So what we're left with is a subconscious sense that these themes all belong together like the members of a large family. On the other hand, I think it is too tempting to suggest that every prominent theme has some meaningful connection to another theme that explains some aspect of the narrative. I'm of the opinion that a relationship has to be exceptionally clear to be believable - not necessarily obvious, but with several points of intersection to make the case convincing, and not just, say, a single interval (e.g., the supposed Vader cadence in Rey's theme).

Thanks for everyone's thoughtful replies. It's always good to add these facts to work them into the complete picture. That said, I think we have to make a distinction between compositional intent and audience interpretation, since they are not always the same thing. As you said, Inky, my analyses are indeed from the films themselves, so I have in that way absolved the analyses of dealing with how the music got there. All that matters here is what is there in the film regardless of its what was intended where. This is a more appropriate tact in film music than in concert music, since in film, decisions about what music goes where is a collaborative effort whereas in concert music it is generally done only by the composer. One thing that we're never privy to, for example, is what is said during spotting sessions, so we're never really sure who made what decision in the first place. So this question about compositional intent versus audience interpretation even affects a claim like this. It's one thing for a composer to say that, and entirely another to find evidence of it in the score. I actually considered linking Battle of the Heroes to the Force theme, with the former's opening three notes rising through the first three notes of a minor scale. But then, I looked through the Star Wars canon and found that a whole slew of themes do the very same thing - the instrumental melody in Duel of the Fates (not the ostinato or choral melody), the Trade Federation march, the Flag Parade, the Walkers on Hoth theme, even the Arena march (though that continues further up the scale), and of course the Force theme. There really isn't anything else that could link it to the Force theme, so with only three notes in common with the Force theme that are indeed a part of so many other themes, it seemed unconvincing to connect the two, even with the appearance of the Force theme twice during the battle. I'm not denying that Williams composed it with that theme in mind, only that what he wrote in the end leaves very little connection between the two themes and so makes it difficult to hear as based on that theme specifically, especially when there are other themes that it has more in common with.

You bet. Can't say when exactly, but not long from now.

Here is part 6 of my Celebrating Star Wars series, this one on Revenge of the Sith. http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/celebrating-star-wars-themes-part-6-of-6-battle-of-the-heroes/ Enjoy! Analysis of themes and leitmotifs in Episode VII coming soon as well...