Yannick

Maybe he wasn't. It doesn't matter, you can still search for influences, analise the way he represented characters (and genders, of course) across his work, the impact on culture, how the people interpreted the music and the impact it had
 
I can think about his Star Wars work. Leia's theme is maybe the most romantic from the Original Trilogy, used to represent a woman, even thought there are variations according to how she acts. If she takes the lead, JW gives us an action cue, but it's mainly a classic representation of a woman, I think. 40 years later, he didn't wrote Rey's theme that way, because her character was created in a different era, under others circunstances. Was supposed to express a different idea of feminity. And even if JW didn't thought about it, you can't deny the influence of context. You have ideology even in music, yes. Because it is a cultural expression.
 
Wagner being antisemite doesn't make The ring of the Nibelung a nazi composition, for example.
 
I'm sure a lot of people in the forum can explain it better than me and go way deeper since I'm just a sociology student and not an art/music specialist. I think is nice to have different perspectives to think about it. It enriches the debate 

Maybe he wasn't. It doesn't matter, you can still search for influences, analise the way he represented characters (and genders, of course) across his work, the impact on culture, how the people interpreted the music and the impact it had
 
I can think about his Star Wars work. Leia's theme is maybe the most romantic from the Original Trilogy, used to represent a woman, even thought there are variations according to how she acts. If she takes the lead, JW gives us an action cue, but it's mainly a classic representation of a woman, I think. 40 years later, he didn't wrote Rey's theme that way, because her character was created in a different era, under others circunstances. Was supposed to express a different idea of feminity. And even if JW didn't thought about it, you can't deny the influence of context. You have ideology even in music, yes. Because it is a cultural expression.
 
Wagner being antisemite doesn't make The ring of the Nibelung a nazi composition, for example.
 
I'm sure a lot of people in the forum can explain it better than me and go way deeper since I'm just a sociology student and not an art/music specialist. I think is nice to have different perspectives to think about it. It enriches the debate 

I’ve been lucky to meet him and get signatures several times, and also some pictures. The first time (top left) was with guys I didn’t (and still don’t) know because Williams was in a hurry, so we did a group photo. Second time (bottom left) was taken early, so we weren’t ready for the pic and thus looked bewildered. Third time (top right) is golden, and I even got it signed at another meeting. These were all from when he used to be more interactive at the Boston concerts. In more recent years (aka my adulthood and not having a teenager haircut), I haven’t been as lucky, as much as I’d love to have a new picture with him. Still, I don’t take any of my high school-era Williams experiences for granted!
 
He’s always been an incredibly kind man, very gentle and attentive.

Well, what John Williams or any other composer explicitly think isn't that important to critical theory. Ideology can be spread not only by a conscious decision, but also by unconscious actions, habits, and social forces that lie beyond our awarenes. It can silently permeate the very fabric of our society and our daily routine without most of us ever realizing it.
 
Here's one of my favourite living philosophers, Slavoj Žižek, deducing things about the English, the French, and the Germans just by examining the shapes of their toilets:
 
 
These are the small, eye-opening things that make us think twice about the reality that we all take for granted. You feel yourself beginning to ask questions about why certain phenomena are the way they are, what those phenomena tell us about the society in which they exist, and what else can be deduced from all of it.
 
Of course, philosophy isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I perfectly understand it if you're not into it. Some of the thinkers, like Hegel, Lacan, or Derrida can even be off-putting due to their obscurantist style of writing that neccessitates the use of secondary literature. There are even running jokes like these 
 
 
It takes time and effort to wrap your head around, but once you do, I feel that it's greatly rewarding.

Maybe he wasn't. It doesn't matter, you can still search for influences, analise the way he represented characters (and genders, of course) across his work, the impact on culture, how the people interpreted the music and the impact it had
 
I can think about his Star Wars work. Leia's theme is maybe the most romantic from the Original Trilogy, used to represent a woman, even thought there are variations according to how she acts. If she takes the lead, JW gives us an action cue, but it's mainly a classic representation of a woman, I think. 40 years later, he didn't wrote Rey's theme that way, because her character was created in a different era, under others circunstances. Was supposed to express a different idea of feminity. And even if JW didn't thought about it, you can't deny the influence of context. You have ideology even in music, yes. Because it is a cultural expression.
 
Wagner being antisemite doesn't make The ring of the Nibelung a nazi composition, for example.
 
I'm sure a lot of people in the forum can explain it better than me and go way deeper since I'm just a sociology student and not an art/music specialist. I think is nice to have different perspectives to think about it. It enriches the debate 

Wow, I knew of Hooper's musicological work, but not that he taught a Williams course!
 
I now know of at least three institutions that have dedicated Williams undergraduate classes: Liverpool, M.I.T. (taught by the wonderful Marty Marks), and Tufts by me. I suspect there's quite a lot more out there.
  
 
Yep, satire aside, this kind of critical approach has value too. I tried to cover both appreciation, historical contextualization, and evaluation in my Williams course this past spring (though COVID interfered with all of it to a certain extent). Hopefully I'll get a chance to teach it again soon, it was quite popular. I think there even may be a few of my pupils who now lurk JWfan!:
 
Tufts MUS-55
The Music of John Williams and Star Wars
A critical evaluation of the music of John Williams. Emphasis is placed Williams's eclectic style and the wider cultural and social currents in which his music participates. The composer’s engagement with history and politics is given special attention, notably through collaborations with directors like Spielberg and Stone and connections to local musical institutions. Second half of course dedicated to the scores for the Star Wars franchise, focusing on topics of thematic construction, myth, and gender and racial representation. No prior background in music required; essential musicological concepts introduced through direct study of Williams's music.

I know your reply is satire, but I wouldn't mind learning something like that in general. The way ideology is reflected in and reinforced by cultural phenomena, such as film music, would be a fascinating subject to study.

Nice! Same first 2 notes as Emperor, but with that motion inverted?
 
Emperor: C Eb C Eb C Bb C Eb C G F# F
 
 

I never noticed this before, but now I absolutely can hear it. 
 
To get a little technical, I think it's the characteristic fa - so melodic motion that links the two themes. In the Psalm of the Sith, it's a corrupted ^#4-^5, and with a brief skip back down to ^1, but overall same essential melodic behavior. Fantastic!
 
Rey: C  Eb  G   C   F   G
Sith: C  Eb  D   F#  C   G

I reckon it would be fair to say that instead of linking to any one specific character, it's a more encompassing theme that signifies evil in a general sense. As you say, we already have the Emperor's Theme, so to me, this is the Anti-Light Side/Force Theme - just as the Force Theme can cover multiple characters or motives. 

Absolutely! In my mind, this was the full evilness Emperor's theme. It remindes me more to that than to Imperial March, tbh. And is used in so many different ways! Is there any other Star Wars theme so versatile and which Williams exploited it in so many ways in a single movie? I don't think so! I have to say, my favourite is the choir heard in the beggining of track 7. That sounds tenebrous. But is not in the movie, isn't it? 

Maybe Williams was reading Wookiepedia 
 
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Darth_Tenebrous

Absolutely! In my mind, this was the full evilness Emperor's theme. It remindes me more to that than to Imperial March, tbh. And is used in so many different ways! Is there any other Star Wars theme so versatile and which Williams exploited it in so many ways in a single movie? I don't think so! I have to say, my favourite is the choir heard in the beggining of track 7. That sounds tenebrous. But is not in the movie, isn't it? 

Indeed. There's even a melodic preview of sorts in TLJ here:
 
 
It's probably all part of that Tension/Desperation/Ludlow motivic complex Williams draws from so often. To paraphrase Maz Kanata: if you listen long enough, you see the same melodic patterns in different leitmotifs.

An attractive theory, @crumbs! It makes a good deal of sense. I've just been trying to research what the facts are, or at least the things that we believe are facts at this point.
 
There's the partial cue list of the Nov. 11 cut:
 
The later appearance of Palpatine would depend on whether he was introduced in 2M04 The Emperor Lives or perhaps in 1M08 Approaching the Nursery. It's possible 2M04 may have been, say, the reveal that he is alive to the Resistance and that 1M08 was the reveal to the audience.
 
Some tracking noted by yourself:
 
And other tracking noted by @Smaug the iron:
 
I think it would make sense that Williams was not so keen on using the old Emperor's theme for Palpatine, because when there's a central villain who's known to the good guys (in other words, a big baddie that is the source of the conflict), Williams has tended to write a big new theme for them (Vader in TESB, the Emperor in ROTJ). Yes, Palpatine is the same person here, but he's in a new context as the villain who was (apparently) in the shadows and has now been revealed to wreak his havoc on the Resistance. There's also the greater emphasis on the spiritual and supernatural nature of it, which is no doubt what inspired the a cappella version of Anthem of Evil.
 
So it makes sense that Williams wrote Anthem of Evil for Palpatine in this new context. After all, with the exception of TLJ, where the temp track was used in lieu of spotting sessions and was almost certainly the reason for the fewer new themes than one would expect, Williams does seem to like characterizing each new Star Wars score with its new themes even when there are many old ones as well.
 
Now what parts of ROTS were tracked that use the Emperor theme? I couldn't find it among those listed in the spoiler tags above.

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.

ALSO: it doesn't say in the post itself, but Gordy said in the comments that it contains 3 1/2 hours of music!

Amazing

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/interview-john-williams-at-89-the-man-behind-the-best-and-most-hummable-film-scores-6z32zqz3h
 
Interview: John Williams at 89, the man behind the best (and most hummable) film scores
The composer tells Richard Morrison about his decades-long career — including the time he helped out a struggling LSO with ‘some sci‑fi film’
 
He left it late, but in January this year John Williams added another achievement to a body of work that includes more than 100 film scores, dozens of symphonic works and 52 Academy award nominations. Just a few weeks shy of his 88th birthday he made his conducting debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in the ornately gilded Golden Hall of the Musikverein.
 
The concert, filmed and recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and released next week, was remarkable for several reasons. According to Williams, this venerable orchestra had never played a note of his music before. It certainly made up for lost time, delivering extracts from more than a dozen of Williams’s greatest scores, including Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Harry Potter films, Jurassic Park, ET, Jaws and Schindler’s List.
 
And the Viennese musicians weren’t the only ones venturing into unfamiliar territory. “Although I’ve done a lot of concert work in America, I had never conducted publicly in Europe before,” Williams admits, speaking down the phone from his Los Angeles home. “And I never really intended to. It always seemed a long way from California. When this invitation came, however, I thought, ‘Well, if I’m ever to conduct a concert in Europe in this lifetime, I’d better get on with it.’ And there’s no greater honour than being invited to conduct in the Musikverein.”
 
Was Williams aware of the history of the hall as he walked out on to that famous platform? After all, in his remarks from the conductor’s podium he referred to his soundtracks for the Star Wars films — all nine of them — as “a nice round number”, a remark clearly picked up by the Viennese audience as an allusion to the number of symphonies written by Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler and Bruckner.
 
“Absolutely,” he replies. “For any composer, to visit Vienna is a spiritual journey. It’s as much of a Mecca as we musicians have. Especially if, like me, you revere Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler. Just the chance to breathe the same air as Haydn — one of the purest, most instinctive talents in the history of music — was more than I could resist.”
 
Which of those composers would Williams most liked to have met? “Oh, Beethoven of course,” Williams says. “I still read through his scores for the pleasure of what I hear in my head, and for the beauty I find in their craftsmanship. And I think he might have been interested in film if he’d lived 200 years later, though he probably would have been horrified by having his music drowned out by the noise of spaceships flying past.”
 
And how did the Vienna Philharmonic take to Williams’s epic film scores? “They rose to the challenge brilliantly,” the composer says. “To be honest, I was a bit concerned before I got there. I know they have this fabulous romantic sound, and they can seem to turn on 19th-century style more genuinely than any other orchestra — but I had worries about the rotary valve trumpets [a more old-fashioned form of trumpet, still favoured in German and Austrian orchestras]. I was concerned about so much upper-register work being played by trumpets without the sort of pistons we use in Britain and America. I need not have worried, though: the trumpets were fabulous. Their pitching and power blew me away.”
 
Hearing music from so many films and decades collected together on one recording makes one appreciate the protean nature of Williams’s genius. There is no single “Williams style”. Yes, the swaggering imperial marches of Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark might be regarded as a hallmark, but so might the spooky, bitonal shifts of the Harry Potter score, or the relentless Prokofiev-like ostinatos of Jaws, or the uneasy Vaughan Williams-like pastoralism of War Horse, or the Yiddish melancholy of Schindler’s List. Does Williams recognise this aspect of his craft, the ability to use the past 200 years of orchestral composition in the way that a painter might use a palette, selecting the colours and textures appropriate to the mood of each movie?
 
“Yes, that’s the essence of being a film composer,” he says. “We are asked to conjure all sorts of moods. I remember in my early days being asked to write burlesque and vaudeville-type music for comedies simultaneously with supplying big romantic scores for dramas. If you are going to write music for cinema, or at least for more than one or two films, you have to accept all varieties of challenge. It goes with the territory.”
 
And although few people think of Williams as an avant-garde composer, there are many moments in his films when he displays a remarkable grasp of what were, at the time, very avant-garde techniques. The nebulous string clusters that open Close Encounters, for instance, could have come straight out of a score by Ligeti or Penderecki. “Yes, it’s true,” Williams acknowledges. “In film there’s often the need for a composer to change gear even in the space of a few minutes. So in Close Encounters, yes, you get those Penderecki-like clusters, but they are then combined with a romantic tune, all in the course of a six-minute sequence.”
 
Does his inspiration ever dry up? Down the phone there is a sardonic chuckle. “There can be no such thing as writer’s block in film composition,” he says. “You are closer to being a journalist than a novelist. You have a certain number of days to write a certain number of minutes of music, and you have to get on with it. It’s a job of carpentry, of manufacturing musical things.”
 
So he never hits a blank? “Oh sometimes, but if there’s a section of a scene I can’t think how to treat I will just move on to another bit, then come back to it. It usually solves itself.”
 
How much do film directors help or hinder the process? Another knowing chuckle down the line. “Directors will always talk about what they think they want musically,” Williams replies. “And I always listen to them. But usually when I get to the piano and start to work, those ideas are pretty much gone. It’s always better for me to respond to the visual material — the film that’s actually being shot — than to verbal instructions.
 
“And of course there’s huge variety in that species of humanity called film directors. Some are very musical. Others are suspicious of using music at all.”
 
Where does Steven Spielberg, the director with whom Williams has collaborated for 46 years, sit in that spectrum? “Oh, with Steven there can’t be enough music,” Williams exclaims. “He always wants more and more. It’s rather touching in its way. He will come to a recording session that ends at a certain hour, the musicians will be packing up, and Steven will say, ‘Where are they going? Why are you stopping? Haven’t you got anything else you can play?’ He just loves the process so much.”
 
Williams admits to being a “child of Hollywood” — his father, a jazz drummer, moved the family there in 1948, and Williams began his career playing piano in Hollywood orchestras throughout the 1950s. Yet some of his most famous scores for Spielberg were recorded not in Hollywood, but in Britain, with the London Symphony Orchestra at Denham or Shepperton studios.
 
“I was introduced to the LSO by my dear friend André Previn, when he was the orchestra’s principal conductor, and of course the LSO players were whizz kids at sight-reading, so we made many recordings together,” Williams recalls.
 
In fact, the story is more dramatic than that. In 1976 the LSO — in desperate financial difficulties — asked Previn if he could write another film score so the orchestra could make some money by recording it. Previn said he was too busy, but offered to phone a friend who was writing a score for “some sci-fi film”.
 
The friend was Williams, who said he would hire the LSO as long as the orchestra could squeeze in 18 sessions in the next month. The orchestra agreed, as long as some sessions could begin at 11pm, after its regular concerts were over. And thus was the soundtrack to Star Wars recorded.
 
Even more extraordinary, the LSO had just recruited a new principal trumpet — the soon-to-be-legendary Maurice Murphy. So on his first day in his new job Murphy’s first task was to blast the opening notes of one of the 20th century’s greatest movie melodies.
 
“Yes, Maurice came out to Denham and we started with the fanfare from Star Wars,” Williams recalls. “And of course he shocked the world by hitting that top C with that extrovert, heroic, raw timbre he had — the perfect sound for the kind of action film that Star Wars was. I loved him from that moment! We always said that we would have a round of golf together, but of course we never found the time, and then he died way too soon.”
 
With most work in Hollywood suspended during the pandemic, Williams might be forgiven for taking a well-earned break from composition. Not a bit of it. He’s spending his time finishing a violin concerto for Anne-Sophie Mutter, who also features in the Vienna concert playing virtuoso arrangements of his soundtracks (“Harry Potter meets Paganini,” Williams quips). Astonishingly, it will be the 19th concerto or quasi-concerto he has written for the concert hall.
 
“I think of my work outside film as being part of my own musical self-education,” he says. “And believe me, the road to being harp-savvy enough to write a harp concerto is a long one. But it’s also nice to write something that doesn’t require the approval of a studio boss. And, you know, even if I wasn’t being paid I would always want to write music. The greatest thrill of my life has been hearing my music played, almost immediately, by wonderful orchestras. It’s something I wish every composer could experience.”
 
He’s not so far away from his tenth decade. Does he ever contemplate hanging up his quill? “Never,” he says. “I will press on. Music isn’t a profession. It’s my oxygen. Take that away and I’d really be in trouble.”

Wow! Now I absolutely can understand what you mean! It's pretty incredible you guys are able to find this kind of little subtle details. As just a SW fan, I'm amazed of your skills 
 
And yes, as you've said, SW references use to be way more clear for guys like me (super casual listeners) so this is very high level! 
 
Thanks for the explanation and for sharing this knowledge. Is super nice to learn this kind of things.

Wow! Now I absolutely can understand what you mean! It's pretty incredible you guys are able to find this kind of little subtle details. As just a SW fan, I'm amazed of your skills 
 
And yes, as you've said, SW references use to be way more clear for guys like me (super casual listeners) so this is very high level! 
 
Thanks for the explanation and for sharing this knowledge. Is super nice to learn this kind of things.

Wow! Now I absolutely can understand what you mean! It's pretty incredible you guys are able to find this kind of little subtle details. As just a SW fan, I'm amazed of your skills 
 
And yes, as you've said, SW references use to be way more clear for guys like me (super casual listeners) so this is very high level! 
 
Thanks for the explanation and for sharing this knowledge. Is super nice to learn this kind of things.

It's a thematic transformation (that's a proper term) rather than a straightforward thematic statement, meaning that it's been significantly altered, so it's going to sound different, to the point where you could easily miss it if you're not exactly listening for it. As @Falstaft pointed out, it's unusual for Williams to work this way, and I would agree, especially in Star Wars, where references to themes are usually made abundantly clear.
 
But here's what I mean by the thematic transformation (or development, as I called it in the analysis). In "Advice", the original rhythm has been stripped away, the harmony is entirely different, and the tempo is slowed way down. BUT the intervals and contour (melodic shape) are much the same, so it retains some fundamental aspects of the original and is still recognizable. See below. The square bracketed sections all do this kind of thing. I show the original transposed to the same note as "Advice" for comparison.
 
 

 
 
Hope that makes things clearer!

Nice analysis, Frank! This track always goes unnoticed after Healing Wounds while I'm listening the FYC album. Anyway, I think it works great with the footage
 
 
And just like with Han's death, there's some silence to start the conversation and then the music shows up. Would have loved to hear a Torn Apart reference, but both are gorgeous, light, soft and soulful pieces of music.
 
 
And a great use of it! Just when the lightsaber is shown, like the last bit of evilness in Ben. Not even his theme.
 
 
I always thought that's a version of The Rise Of Skywalker theme but not sure tbh.

It’s incredible. For me, TFA somehow started my intense JW-fandom. It was like a wake-up call, realizing he was still very much alive and kicking and I’d better follow everything he did while I still could.
 
It’s funny how I was anxiously waiting for news about TLJ, whether he could do it or not – let alone finish the trilogy. And here we are in 2020, feeling like he could potentially do another trilogy of films still. What a gift this man is.