martybmusic

On the latest episode of UnderScore, we sat down with Alan Snelling, assistant engineer to Eric Tomlinson on Star Wars (as well as Raiders, Superman and the rest of the original trilogy), who shared some wonderful recollections of the historic first recording of the Main Title. The remainder of the episode is a near hour-long musical exploration into the composition, orchestration and storytelling power of that infamous minute and a half of music. Enjoy! [This is the second episode in a six-part series on the score]
 

Sorry, I'm on the "I like everything Star Wars" side.
 
I haven't watched/read/listened to a single piece of Star Wars media that has ever been not fun.

Have a feeling I previously did a score restore for just this cue's ending, but seeing as almost the entire cue was replaced by tracked music from TFA, this gorgeous track seemed a worthy contender for a score restore.
 
Patchy guesswork was required in places, but hopefully this gives some idea of Williams' original intentions for the sequence.
 

Btw, Gloria confirmed me that the piece is going to be recorded by the Albany Symphony next year.

All from the sheet music, but fortunately the typeset full scores done by JKMS have a bit more info than most of the handwritten full scores did. They’ve all got dates, which provides a lot of valuable information about the order cues were written (and sometimes revised) in. They also include Williams’ notes about onscreen action from his sketches.
 
In this particular case, JW actually wrote “Theme” above the first appearance of what seems to me to be an alternate Rey’s theme. And that same theme turned up again in a subsequent cue written shortly after (1M6 Seeing A Mother And Getting Rations), also used for an appearance of Rey.

Yeah, this is basically a score we've just never actually heard most of, as intended.  It's genuinely exciting.

Getting caught up with this fascinating discussion (as well as Pando's gorgeous early 1M5 mockup). Have been working through an analysis of the motives/development/aesthetic of TFA and the timeline of Williams' writing is fascinating. 
 
Is this information mostly derived from sheet music or are there other sources to the sequence of events here? Just excited to learn from whatever's available.
 
There's something about the scant fragments and unrepeated motives throughout the score that I actually really love (that hurried string motif in 'That Girl With The Staff'; the evocative woodwind theme leading up to Maz's castle; the few remnants we're left with of the First Order Theme, etc).
While seemingly not part of the design, the finished product evokes that 'lived in' Star Wars aesthetic for me -- like how it felt to first see the odds & ends in the Jawa sandcrawler -- fragments here and there that speak to a larger world we won't actually fully explore .
 
At any rate, the orchestra may not always sound the most bombastic of the sequels and the editing/structure may frustrate some, but I have such a soft spot for the score - just can't stop going back to it.  

Getting caught up with this fascinating discussion (as well as Pando's gorgeous early 1M5 mockup). Have been working through an analysis of the motives/development/aesthetic of TFA and the timeline of Williams' writing is fascinating. 
 
Is this information mostly derived from sheet music or are there other sources to the sequence of events here? Just excited to learn from whatever's available.
 
There's something about the scant fragments and unrepeated motives throughout the score that I actually really love (that hurried string motif in 'That Girl With The Staff'; the evocative woodwind theme leading up to Maz's castle; the few remnants we're left with of the First Order Theme, etc).
While seemingly not part of the design, the finished product evokes that 'lived in' Star Wars aesthetic for me -- like how it felt to first see the odds & ends in the Jawa sandcrawler -- fragments here and there that speak to a larger world we won't actually fully explore .
 
At any rate, the orchestra may not always sound the most bombastic of the sequels and the editing/structure may frustrate some, but I have such a soft spot for the score - just can't stop going back to it.  

Recording content as we speak - extremely eager to restart our engines 😊

Recording content as we speak - extremely eager to restart our engines 😊

Recording content as we speak - extremely eager to restart our engines 😊

Recording content as we speak - extremely eager to restart our engines 😊

Recording content as we speak - extremely eager to restart our engines 😊

https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2021/03/05/legacy-video-conversations-brueggemann/

You may find Chris Malone's article the most illuminating here. Honestly, his entire piece is so well researched and such a delight to read (and frequently re-read, in my case).
 
http://www.malonedigital.com/starwars.htm#.XihhLlNKjOQ (PDF link within)
 
Discussion of the ROTJ top end in the 2CD Special Edition set begins at the bottom of page 28.

You're all welcome.
 

I was curious about that as well. If memory serves, both TFA and TLJ had their piano sheet music published within a week or so of the theatrical release.
 
|| Warning || entering tin-foil hat territory... ||
 
I've been thinking about a few interesting & at first seemingly unrelated features of the TROS soundtrack/score/production (forgive me if someone has already leaped to these conclusions). 
Delay of sheet music publication. Inclusion of The Imperial March in a prominent position in the End Credits suite. Relatively minimal screentime of the highly publicized Sith Troopers in the theatrical cut. Repeated inclusion of unknown minor march in promotional material, at first in the Anthony Daniels TotalFilm tweets, then rather conspicuously at the start of the livestream of the premiere (to my ear & taste, I would've sworn this was a new Williams work and concert suite from the upcoming score).  Given the above, is it too wild to speculate that JW composed a theme for these Sith Troopers, but developments in the film's edit led to it being cut out entirely? Rolling with this idea a bit, the 3 or 4 brief shots in which the troopers appear all happen while other thematic material is already underway - it seems plausible to me that those short moments wouldn't include quotes of those themes and so the idea would then be left absent entirely (this is not even to grapple with the liberal repositioning of cues in the final cut).
 
Looking at a somewhat similar situation - the score to TFA and John's motif for the First Order - with the score to Hux's speech dialed out (along with perhaps other edits), there are to my count only 2-3 appearances of the theme (as the shuttle takes Poe to the star destroyer, as the resistance discuss their battle plans, and as the x-wings come out of hyperspace for the bombing run). The motif was effectively held back from a place of prominence in the final cut and not surprisingly left completely out of the set of ongoing themes going forward in the trilogy.
 
For the sake of argument (and again, please forgive the theorizing), let's say this is what happened - a removed March of the Sith Troopers.  For me, the above peculiarities start to fit together. With the theme making zero appearances in the final cut, JW pulls it from the soundtrack and from the other key spot where he features his new concert suite material - the end credits. The new theme is replaced with The Imperial March there (the motif of which at least appears several times in the score).
 
Continuing with all this speculation, whenever this change was made it was soon enough to hit the release window for the digital and physical versions of the soundtrack. But is it possible that the sheet music publication had to operate within a different window and Hal Leonard weren't able to correct the physical books in time? We already know that the Art of TROS book as well as the novelization have both been delayed (along with the sheet music, much later than the releases for TFA and TLJ). 
 
Take this all in the spirit of wild conjecture  Looking forward to the piano arrangements, and hopefully the Signature Edition concert score for 'The Rise of Skywalker' whenever it is they're eventually published. 

@crumbs @Jay @Omen II This should help:
 
John Williams - The Post 
Cue List

1M6 R "The Papers" 
1M7 R "Various Presidents" 
2M10 "Two Martini Lunch" [source]
2M12 "Messenger Boy" 
2M12 New "News Boy" 
3M25 "Reading the Paper" 
4M30 "A Booth at Chasen's" [source]
4M31 "Richard The Base" 
4M32 "For Chester, With Love" [source]
4M38 R "First Class Sent" 
5M46 RR "Scanning the Papers" 
5M46 Insert 
5M48 "McNamara Photo" 
6M54 "Wild About Harry" 
6M55 R "Let's Publish" 
6M55A "Harry's Party" 
6M55B "Lawyer Talk" 
6M57 New "Dad's Note" 
6M57 R “Dad’s Note”
6M59 RR "Setting the Type" 
7M64 R “Presses Roll” 
7M64A 
7M65 R "The News is on the Street" 
7M65B "More Courtroom" 
7M66 R "Courtroom to Court Building" 
7M68 R "The Decision"
7M68A "The Decision"
7M68A String Insert "The Decision" 
7M68B "Meg Reads The Decision"
7M69 R "The Court Votes, The Presses Roll" 
7M69 R Insert 
7M69A "The Court Votes, The Presses Roll"
7M70 "End Credits"
End Fix
 
For what it’s worth, “For Chester, With Love” is in the key of C and has this cryptic text at the beginning, where the tempo and style would normally be indicated: “Joe Comfort, Comfort”.
 
🤷‍♂️

It may have been available slightly sooner, but found my order of a few of the individual pieces (digitally) via sheet
 
musicdirect. It’s dated Dec 29, 2015. 
 
 
 
 
 
 


The physical books may have been available slightly later than that date, but if memory serves I recall seeing them in stock at a local music shop before the end of the year. 

The tribute that @TownerFan,  @mahler3 and MM give to him in Maurizio's podcast episode is fantastic, I just listened to it again last week.

Ludwig told me last week about this topic which I missed, and at the time my reaction was to call it the "fate" tag. Tragic works too, less overtly Wagnerian. Perhaps "destiny," and here's another instance of it in the Destiny track... exposed on solo clarinet with an extra neighbour note - 5-(4)-6-2 - right after (yet another) gentle Sith/Neapolitan variation of the Force.
 

I also suggested to Ludwig that the major mediant incarnation of this with Ben Solo's death matches earlier instances in Galaxy's Edge...
 
 
... and TPM (same key as GE), where I first became aware of it as an entity, and where it enters as if out of nowhere, as we prepare to meet Anakin for the first time.
 

In yet another variation in the same cue the tag is transposed up: 1-b2-5
 
 

In the case of INNER CITY, that was based on an original cue title (as were some of the other titles on the original LP).
 

Of course, as we saw with the recent TROS cues, maintaining the original title is a somewhat rare case. I do love some of these spruce-up changes between cue name and soundtrack though. One from TFA comes to mind - 'That Lady With the Stick' became 'That Girl With the Staff'  
 

In the case of INNER CITY, that was based on an original cue title (as were some of the other titles on the original LP).
 

Of course, as we saw with the recent TROS cues, maintaining the original title is a somewhat rare case. I do love some of these spruce-up changes between cue name and soundtrack though. One from TFA comes to mind - 'That Lady With the Stick' became 'That Girl With the Staff'  
 

Two things occurred to me:
 
1) I've now seen John Williams live as many times (3) as I've seen Jerry Goldsmith
2) I've now performed on a stage that Williams has also performed on

That's not the 2016 version we were talking about. That's the partially-botched 2017 remaster. The 2016 version was more consistent and many tracks sounded better, especially TESB. And was also available in hi-res on HDTracks, before they removed it in 2017 to make way for the newer remasters.
 
 
Nope. They were actually remastered twice. Once in 2016 using old vinyl masters, and again in 2017 using new hi-res scans of the original master tapes. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, the 2017 remasters had some... inconsistencies.