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And underneath, two copies of the Gabrieli Brass's recording that includes "Music for Brass."
 
And, best of all, this sandcrawler?
 

I sat in the first row next to his entrance. When he came in he winked at me. Best. Day. Ever. 

This might be the best piece of its kind written on Williams--informative, analytical, and compelling. 
 
A mention of the Fablemans would make me happier, but Indy works for the global audience.  

Listened to all three sequel OSTs tonight; just finished. Pretty wild to go back to TFA and re-listen to the very first iterations of Rey and Kylo's themes, and then to hear how many times they are reprised in various interesting ways over the course of the trilogy.
 
I will also say that I love the three main concert arrangements of this trilogy (one per film): "Rey's Theme", "The Rebellion Is Reborn" and lastly "The Rise of Skywalker". These are some of the best themes he's written in recent memory, and the arrangements are all top-notch.
 
I wish JW would record a SW album now that he's finished with the saga. Use the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles (or the "Skywalker Symphony", or whatever) and just re-record a bunch of stuff, especially tracks he's never re-recorded before, like: "Duel of the Fates", "Battle of the Heroes", "Rey's Theme", "March of the Resistance", "The Jedi Steps", "The Rebellion Is Reborn", "The Rise of Skywalker" and of course the new arrangement of "Han Solo and the Princess", among others.

The Training Course missing from the OST is an absolute tragedy. The whole cue is wonderful. 

Star Wars: Episode IX- The Rise Of Skywalker (OST)
 
I guess JW wasn't helped by the film in this regard, but its very clear that he has absolute nothing new to say about Star Wars.
 
As a result we are treated, or assaulted, with a score that is nothing but loud loud bombast.
 
Its the kinda thing fans here love. Its also what gives film music in general a bad reputation when it comes to an artform.
 
Williams remains the most technically gifted composer working in Hollywood. But that just means his bad scores are compositionally more interesting than most. 
 
In the film, it does just fine. On its own, this is a bad score. Worse probably than Revenge Of The Sith, which at least had an more interesting choral presence and some bonkers percussive stuff.
 
This is just Star Wars Bombast© incredibly loud, incredibly familiar, incredibly empty.

@Falstaft (hiatus til TROS) Others have voiced this but I have yet to do so personally: you are such a treasured member of this community. Thanks for consistently sharing your wonderful insight with us as well as for your always quality posts and analysis. 

The final sequence with the New Home cue was the best marriage of music to visuals in a long time. Perhaps it was the lack of dialogue and loud sound effects, but it felt like art.  Rey riding down the sandhill was a nice callback, both visually and musically.  I was happy that the saga ended with such subdued poignancy.  

TRoS has had me constantly reading the forum in a way I haven't since AOTC in 2002... and there were far fewer members and threads back then! This has been so much fun.

This is easily the best of the ST scores based on the OST alone. And I love the whole thing, Finale included. Goosebumps for that last callback to 1977. Also, as much as folks are disappointed about Binary Sunset, I like that it's a clean open, reminds me of Vader's funeral pyre.

Small but important note: I'm relieved there is no source music this time out.

I feel like JW's work here is full of light like we haven't seen in decades (apologies to those big fans of all his other 2010s scores).
 
And shadow: as much as we don't want to dwell on it, he's let us in just a little from his vantage point on mortality. Farewell, indeed. May it be years and years away. That said, he finds a way to communicate darkness and perversity here with unusual economy. The "oo" syllables changing to an open mouth crescendo in Anthem of Evil is old school fun (a scream of fear, if you like).

One of the more interesting details for me is that chord at 2:42 in Farewell. Not only do we have a crescendo and theatrical stop a la E.T. Adventures on Earth, it's the notes of the Darth Vader chord, down to the concert pitches: E-flat, G-flat, B-flat, plus a conspicuous D natural in the top voice which is faithful to the G minor key from the concert march (chord: E-flat minor major seventh over G-flat). You could stop right there and drop into the Imperial March with perfect musical grammar (though little narrative sense). Echoes down the line of the Death Star motif. Also, echoes of a similar climactic chord in the ending of CE3K (same key, different voicing).

Recording wise, I feel like the capture is better even than the first two ST scores. I love all the details in the new recording of the Fanfare, it's the way I've always imagined/remembered it.
 
I look forward to really thoughtful analysis and reviews after we've heard the full score accompanying the film. And I look forward to what we'll be saying years from now! I'm grateful to share in this experience with everyone.

Saw the movie last night and even though I'm a long-time Star Wars fan from way back in '77, I was prepared to be let down after reading so many "meh" to "absolutely terrible" reviews, but me and my adult kids all absolutely loved it.  Sure, it wasn't perfect and there are some things that I would have liked to seen play out in the film the way I'd played them out in my head, but I've never been that kind of fan who bitches about how what's on screen doesn't match up with the made up story in their mind.  To me, played out as a perfectly great way to tie up the entire series, hokey parts and all.  The music was mixed loudly at my theater (which was full, unlike what some of you had said was the experience at your showings) and had a fantastic presence.  Loved JW's quick cameo and even though it moved super fast I don't feel like it overall hurt the movie.  Although I'd absolutely have been okay if they'd made it a bit longer so it could breathe more.  Easily have loved the score to this one much more than Last Jedi, which I like but hardly ever revisit, and maybe either equal to or more than The Force Awakens, which I've also always loved.

I enjoyed the film (although it was certainly flawed) and thought the score worked very well! There were of course some exceptions. The action scenes were very frustrating, e.g. "Falcon Flight" and "The Speeder Chase" were completely butchered and/or inaudible in almost their entirety. And I'm not sure what was up with the opening scene, but it was a mess, both story-wise and music-editing-wise. Also, I agree that Abrams' editing on "Farewell" was extremely disappointing. I had been imagining a scene of the Falcon taking off as the finale of that cue was played, but instead Abrams put it over a somewhat incongruous scene and it didn't feel as powerful as it should have. I was also disappointed at the apparent tracking of the March of the Resistance concert version to replace the beautiful finale of "They Will Come." Still, there were some very effective musical moments, including the "Yoda and the Force" reprise (which gave me full-body chills in the film) and the unreleased (although mostly verbatim reprise, it seemed) Star Wars equivalent of Dunkirk's "Home" scene when all the ships show up with Lando at the end. "Reunion" sounded rather choppy when I heard it on the OST, but it actually played quite well in the film, I thought. I love the opening of that cue. 
 
The unreleased Rey training cue is definitely my holy grail from this one. I felt like most of the best parts were on either the OST or FYC, with some exceptions of course which I may notice more if I see the film again. 
 
The cameo was very cool. Disappeared so quickly though that I barely noticed it! 
 
I also have some more specific thoughts on the OST but I'll save those for later! 

For some reason the post office left mine on the ground near the mailbox, instead of putting it inside! 
 

 
It's fine, though. 

OK.  I saw the film in the theater last night.  And holy motherforking shirtballs, THIS SCORE IS INCREDIBLE.
 
I cannot recall another experience quite like this one, where I went to the theater and saw a movie, and was just in awe of how good the score was the whole way through like this.  What was most amazing was that even after listening to the 95 or so minutes of score we have between the FYC and OST a lot before seeing the film and becoming very familiar with it, EVERY SINGLE ADDITIONAL, UNRELEASED CUE I HEARD IN THE FILM WAS SOMETHING I WANTED TO HEAR AGAIN OUTSIDE THE FILM!  Every cue he chose not to put on the FYC or OST had SOMETHING special in it that made it worth having.  I just sat there being blown away as cue after cue was a great unreleased highlight.
 
I don't understand the reports from people saying eh, most of the highlights were on the FYC or OST, or eh, there's only 30 minutes of more music and most of it was older themes anyway, or whatever.  No way!  I mean, of course a lot of the cues do feature old themes, but many of those old themes are completely new variations of them!  I heard an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC rendition of The Emperor's Theme unlike any I had heard before (it was a quiet rendition, on woodwinds IIRC), a great new version of Luke's theme, some great new Force Theme variations, and TONS, I mean just TONS of great new Rey's Theme variations.
 
JW clearly is in love with Rey, and she is basically the main character of this film, and JW pretty much scores all her scenes with some new version of her theme, and I feel like we only got maybe half of these renditions between the FYC and OST.  He does so much more with that theme in the full score.
 
The other thing apparent from watching the film, is that it is very clear from watching that the film was scripted and shot as a longer experience, and then edited down within an inch of its life for the final cut.  It's quite clear sometimes when entire scenes are missing (some of which we have the cues for on the OST album), and it's also clear in other times that the scenes he kept in where whittled down and down and down after the original cue for them had been recorded.
 
This score is instantly my #1 most requested session leak / complete score release from all the John Williams scores that haven't been expanded yet.  Not only is there just a bunch of great music you can hear in the final film that hasn't been released yet, based on everything we can hear right now it seems clear to me that the full sessions for this score would have the most amount of interesting music we've never heard.
 
I can't remember the last time I was THIS into a new John Williams score this much, nor the last time I got 95 minutes of a score and still wanted more very very much.  It's clear that JW was very inspired while writing this score, either by an earlier longer cut that made a lot more sense, or just something inside him that wanted to make this score really special.  It's amazing to think that an 87 year old man who could have retired 25 years ago with a career more noteworthy than most composers can dream of achieving is still crafting masterpieces like this.  Bravo, maestro!

Holy crap check out this amazing unreleased cue for Rey training in the woods
 

How could that not be on the OST?

And because they are not funny. 

Seeing as how they forgot to write a good movie for TLJ this speculation is valid to me 

I will say that's basically this trilogy I think.  I love the characters, but the big world-building plot stuff wasn't very thought-through.  It's the inverse of the prequels, where the over-arching narrative is really good but the characters were weak as heck.
 
There are worse flaws to have!

@stravinsky, what the hell man? You're stealing my style.  Was five when SW '77 came out and had my mind blown by the experience.  My older brothers and sister got to see it before me because my mom thought I would be too scared of it.  Apparently I was a softy.  They couldn't stop talking about it.  When they saw it for the second time, my mom let go with them and I'll never forget that first B flat major stab.  It blew me away!!! I eventually became a bass trombonist and composer and I think this was my earliest and most formative musical memory.  Empire was an even more powerful experience.  By that time I was already a tremendous JW fan and maybe 8 years old.  It was all anyone was talking about on the playground.  It was like Star Wars + Elvis + Beatles + Michael Jackson + Star Trek + Lord of the Rings all combined.  I wasn't at all a musician but was clearly very musically informed/obsessed already.  Note that in those days, with no internet, once a film left the theater you had NO WAY to see it again in any way.  It was only in our memories and imaginations.  From time to time a picture would be released in baseball cards or a magazine of the upcoming movies and our imaginations again ran wild.  So any time there was a release or opportunity to re-watch these films was a major thrill. 
 
Flash forward, I'm studying music and completely obsessed with JW.  I eventually even got to work on a Star Wars project or two and meet my idol.  I've even had my music performed in concerts with JW's Star Wars which is always a special thrill!  I not only met him, but watch him at work for a whole week.  I even performed next to Jim Self who played tuba on Close Encounters, E.T. Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, Jurassic Park, SW TLJ and millions of other JW scores.  We played Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition with the Pacific Symphony. Sadly, I've lost two of my older brothers since SW '77 came out and I never can see a SW film without remembering the precious memories I had as a kid with those I've since lost.  I am happy that JW family knows how important this was to me and my family and how JW was my childhood and ultimately my livelihood.
 
Me with JW at USC.

 
Performing with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra.

 
My music behind JW's autograph to Star Wars sits in my studio. 

Ach I was only in the chorus lads but thanks. Then again how was I to know as an astonished 8 year old bunking off school one Friday afternoon in late January 1978 (and being taken to see Star Wars with my Uncle Jack... he wasn't really my Uncle just one of my Ma's drinking pals...but every adult was either your Uncle or your Auntie in those days) how could I have known I'd end up being a miniscule minion of the Star Wars religion?
      I'd first heard of Star Wars when my Ma and I were briefly living in Blackpool in England (went went down there from Glasgow because she was forever trying to run away...from herself) and she used to work in a hotel at the seafront. I used to sit in the kitchens in the bowels of the place waiting for her to finish whilst I was being fussed over by the head waiter and his wife who was the cook.
       There was a small portable telly that I would watch whilst munching cake and on came an old game show one evening called "The Krypton Factor". There were only three channels to choose from in those days but conversely the telly was a damn sight better than it is now. Anyway The Krypton Factor (!) had pretentions of being a high brow intellectual show and one of the tasks the contestants had to achieve was to study a short clip of a newly released film then answer detailed questions about it. 
          Well on came Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi in the Cantina and of course I had no idea what this was. What transfixed me though was the presence of this big hairy thing sitting alongside them.
Anyway that was that. I had been whisked to another universe for all of two minutes. But what an impression it had on me. This would've been late October/early November 1977 just about a week after my 8th birthday.
       By the end of November we were back up in Glasgow living in cheap bedsits again and by December that year there were centre page spreads about this new thing called Star Wars that would soon arrive in Scotland. It was then I remembered the big hairy thing again because his image was plastered all over the newspapers. 
      Seeing the photo of "Lord Darth" as my Ma referred to him was enough to send me stratospheric. So the day came that Friday afternoon when I was let off school to go and see this phenomenon with Uncle Jack. I got sweeties and he bought a few cans and we sat there and witnessed the whole thing. It changed my life. Me and all the millions.
        We left the Odeon Cinema on Renfield Street and on the way home bumped into my father who had been separated from my Ma for the past two years. I begged him to take me to see it again. "But you've already seen it!" he exclaimed. "But I want you to see it Da" came my reply. Ah the nuance of pester power...
        By the time Jedi was released I was 13 so therefore old enough to go on my own. I wept bitterly at the end of the film which may have been a reflection of the truly intolerable conditions I was by then enduring at home. By this time we were squatting in a ramshackle house and my Ma's drinking had reached fever pitch. All alone in the house with her I escaped...into music via the tapes of Star Wars and Empire I had pestered my Ma to buy me for Christmas 1980.
    The minute Jedi was released I knew I HAD TO GET THE MUSIC. So within a week I begged, borrowed and stole and went on as many errands as I could to gather the money for the tape. Within a few days the prize was mine. 
        I had a small mono tape recorder then and I would play those three tapes to death. I still have them. I even bought a Baton (!) from Biggars music shop on Glasgow's famous SauchieHall Street. Biggars was one block away from "Casa Cassettes" (now long gone) which was a great music store where I bought my very first tapes. I would listen to the three Star Wars tapes over and over whilst conducting an imaginary orchestra with my baton. 
       The great Carrie Fisher had this to say about the phenomena of long ago in a galaxy far far away. And I agree with her... 
 
“Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up into their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie (Star Wars) misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it.” Via The Princess Diarist
 
And I think this is what the whole world has been trying to do. Trying to relive and recapture the first time we saw Star Wars as kids but failing to realise that with each new movie we got older and each film got further and further away from that feeling of childlike wonder. 
      What doesn't change though is the quality of the one element that saved me through the most desperate times of my life as a kid (and adult). The music. And here I am at 50 years old listening to the latest and very last incarnation from the pen of a master.  I wish time machines were real. I would hop into that escape pod and go back to that freezing Friday in 1978 and relive it just one more time. A golden little day I'll never forget. 
 
May the Force be with you all friends and music lovers! 

Ahem.  Except for the sad day we all know is coming eventually......

Cheers guys. It's funny because I joined this great forum 16 years ago. But I've posted hardly anything. 

I could listen to them talk forever. This is the best thread I've seen in quite some time.

No, not surprising that they DIDN'T record the chorus in isolation.  Here is why.  JW is the undisputed pinnacle of the industry.  When you hire him, you are asking for perfection, not efficiency, not economy.  This is a connoisseur who is saying I only want Viennese boys choir for that one scene and a director will make that happen.  It is true that an LA chorus can simulate the Vienna boys choir, but that is a bit of a hack.  When you bring in the top level connoisseur, the precision matters.  Conrad Pope mentioned this about JW.  In the movie AI, there is a brief moment where Gigolo Joe plays a vintage 1930's era song while seducing someone.  JW composed a piece using authentic 1930's instrumentation.  The rules of that instrumentation violate modern instrumentation and JW corrected Conrad Pope in his orchestration saying that wasn't authentic and true to the style.  The point is that Conrad understood that JW had an encyclopedic knowledge of styles and how to make them authentic that an expert like Pope didn't have.  This was a very minor scene and a throw away moment but demonstrated the extent to the stylistic knowledge of random styles JW acquired that applies to ethic music too.

In LA (so TROS), vocalists are not musicians but actors with the SAG.  They have a whole different (and better) union scale.  I think the reason for this is in early hollywood, they had a lot of musicals where the actor would start singing so singing was an acting duty for decades before it was used as score.  They are blocked in 3 hour sessions with very expensive overtime and overdub regulations.  Meaning it might be cheaper to hire 24 vocalists than 12 vocalists and overdub them.  The idea being each singer is performing the work of two singers and is sort of anti-union since you are unemploying a vocalist so must pay for that rather than exploit that.  In a triple A budget feature film like Star Wars, the cost per singer might be $175 per singer per hour with a three hour minimum so all vocal music would be recorded at the same time.  It's pretty much the same for musicians but the vocalists will have a better maximum cap (like each hour they won't record more than three minutes of recorded singing otherwise additional fees apply), mandatory breaks, etc.  Choral music is very slow to record and it is hard to get more than three minutes recorded in an hour.  The easiest type of singing is vocalized vowels like ooh's and aahhs.  Foreign languages much harder, soloists harder, etc. 
 
In london, they might have had a deal to use the London Symphony Chorus as a part of the London Symphony ensemble so 10 seconds in Empire might have been part of the orchestra fee with additional members rather than a multi-hour minimum. 
 
Question: what was JW's first use of choir?  Was it Empire?  If so, he might have realized how good it works for sci-fi/fantasy and opted for more frequent use in subsequent films with Empire being a very small/minor role for them.