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Really interesting articles!!
 
About the cut John Williams scored being different to the final cut (therefore requiring revisions and edits), keep in mind that, when Williams spotted the film in early January 1977, there was no Death Valley footage, nor any Cantina pick-ups.
Therefore, I believe some of those scenes (like the Landspeeder search, the Sand People scene, R2 captured by Jawas....) were probably scored "blind", without any footage at all. 
 
All the scenes that were shot in Death Valley have the music heavily edited.
 
 
 

Really interesting articles!!
 
About the cut John Williams scored being different to the final cut (therefore requiring revisions and edits), keep in mind that, when Williams spotted the film in early January 1977, there was no Death Valley footage, nor any Cantina pick-ups.
Therefore, I believe some of those scenes (like the Landspeeder search, the Sand People scene, R2 captured by Jawas....) were probably scored "blind", without any footage at all. 
 
All the scenes that were shot in Death Valley have the music heavily edited.
 
 
 

Really interesting articles!!
 
About the cut John Williams scored being different to the final cut (therefore requiring revisions and edits), keep in mind that, when Williams spotted the film in early January 1977, there was no Death Valley footage, nor any Cantina pick-ups.
Therefore, I believe some of those scenes (like the Landspeeder search, the Sand People scene, R2 captured by Jawas....) were probably scored "blind", without any footage at all. 
 
All the scenes that were shot in Death Valley have the music heavily edited.
 
 
 

Good video analysis on Azkaban and why it's the best of the three.

I think consanguinity and continuity are a little over-emphasized in analyzing Williams' music. He's an improviser at heart, and seems to take each film as it comes, and sometimes each scene as it comes. He has no problem dropping previous material for new stuff, and in many cases seems to prefer it.
 
To me, Azkaban feels a little lumpy in soundtrack form, as it was written very episodically, scene-to-scene, compared to the first two. It works fine in the film.

That...may well be the case.
 
A friend made the observation that the draw of these stories for most people is not "The Wizarding World" in the abstract: its Hogwarts. Its something about the combination of the atmosphere of an English boarding school with magic and a mystery story that created the right alchemy.

I mean, what I really want is a new series (books, movies, whatever) that is of the same quality as LotR, Potter, or Star Wars, instead of the constant expanding and expounding, bending and breaking of "franchises." I can only have my nostalgia repackaged so many times before the love wears off, or I dismiss the new stuff entirely.

Mike wanted the new album to open with new things - new longer prologue, new longer Peter's Entrance, new Banning Back Home.  Then you settle into familiar territory with Wendy's Entrance.  John Williams approved this.  If John Williams wanted the other prologue at the front instead, Mike would have swapped them.  This is why the album Lost Boys Chase is in the main program and the film mix is in the bonus tracks, because John Williams wanted it that way.
 
 
 
The take heard in the film is in the main program (in the track "Peter Remembers"), the take heard on the album is in the track with the identical name to the album ("Remembering Childhood").  All tracks that are identically named to an OST track have identical contents to that OST track.

I actually looked into uses of the Force theme in a blog post some time ago and found that this statement was among a relatively small number that were the complete theme and foregrounded in the film. When Williams used the theme in this way in the first six films, they tended to be mark major points in the plot of the Empire/Trade Federation:
 
A New Hope
- Binary sunset - suggesting Luke's destiny to become a Jedi
- Throne room - victory over the Empire
 
Empire Strikes Back - has none, interestingly, probably because the plot focuses not on defeating the Empire but escaping from it (and also introduces the love between Han and Leia, and Yoda as a new character)
 
Return of the Jedi
- Luke lights Vader's funeral pyre
 
The Phantom Menace
- Boy Anakin destroys the Trade Federation ship
 
Attack of the Clones
- Anakin leaves Padme to search for his mother and ends up slaughtering the sand people - beginning of his descent into evil
 
Revenge of the Sith - statements focus on Obi-Wan or the partnership of Anakin and Obi-Wan, which is central to the plot:
- Obi-Wan and Anakin enter huge battle with Federation
- Obi-Wan and Anakin manage to crash land their ship on Coruscant
- Obi-Wan leaves for Utupau to battle Grievous
- The last statement focuses on Luke - his adoptive parents hold him as a baby as they watch a binary sunset, paralleling that of A New Hope
 

It's not quite as front-and-center as some of your other examples, but the statement when Luke reaches out to Leia comes to mind. I would also argue that this is a counterexample to your suggestion, as that beautiful moment isn't really a turning point in the broader story.

These things exist on a kind of sliding scale: just because a theme is not always used in a very direct, semiotic way does not mean that its used for abstractly musical reasons, as such. In fact, one of the things that sets the mature leitmotif apart is exactly that its not used in a crudely indexical "I see it, I hear it" way, but without becoming an abstractly-musical device.
 
The Throne Room is a great case in point, where in the liners Williams gives us a robust logic for it, saying it "represents the re-establishment of the values Ben believed in over the tyranny of the Galactic Empire." We must not forget than in 1977, the finale was concieved as a conclusive victory over the Empire. Indeed, its the only place in the film in which the unabridged theme reaches a full cadence - a kind of Williams' Erlösungsschluss.
 
The attack on the Death Star is perhaps the closest to functioning on an abstractly musical logic. Williams said he wanted to feature all the themes in the finale, saying: "It's a kind of potpourri of all the musical material in the film. I included most, if not all, of the themes in the film." Its perfectly normal that themes somewhat "give way to musical gravity" towards the climax of the piece, rather than partway through.

Hell, even in 1977, he was using it for non-Force-related, non-Obi-wan-related stuff like:
 
Luke staring into the sunset, feeling emo  The Falcon leaving Tatooine X-wings attacking the Death Star The throne room ceremony  
For my money, it's always been used for a wide variety of scenes where it just sounded right—like many SW themes.

I never noticed this before, but in the Sorcerer's Stone cue 8m4 The Mirror Scene, the trombones are playing Hedwig's Theme underneath all the rest of the orchestra playing Voldemort's Theme/general harmonization. I never would have noticed this without the score - its something that you don't really pay attention to, since it adds to the harmony perfectly! Such a classic JW moment. I stand by my opinion that the Harry Potter soundtracks are some of his best works.
 
(timestamped moment)

It was certainly not for lack of trying that Lucas ended up directing and writing those films: he sought others to help write the screenplay and direct the films themselves, although at the same time its clear he was always a little dubious about that enterprise.
 
I never bought the "yes-men" narrative. As far as I can tell, everyone on the original Star Wars were there to shore-up Lucas' vision: the only example of somebody going rogue on the guy was Gilbert Taylor removing the gauze once they got to shooting the scenes on the Death Star in England. Big whuff.
 
Whereas, in Episode I, Lucas thought the Jedi should be all aloof, but Liam Neeson felt it was right that Qui-Gon should reassuringly put his hand on Shmi's shoulder, and he convinced Lucas. For Episode II, Lucas wondered if they could do without sets entirely, and John Knoll talked him out of it. So people were definitely speaking their minds.
 
So this narrative - whereby Star Wars was essentially "good in spite of Lucas" - just doesn't hold to close scrutiny. Not least, too, because the calibre of Lucas' collaborators in the 2000s wasn't any lesser than that of those in the 1970s. The two who usually get credit for "saving" Star Wars are Gary Kurtz and Marcia Griffin. Of the two, Kurtz had almost no say in creative decisions, allowed both Star Wars productions he produced to run overbudget, and went on to produce mostly a series of costly turkeys. Marcia pretty much stopped editing altogether after Return of the Jedi, which itself hardly represents her best work.

I have to agree that it probably just sounded good.
 
Look at it this way. If he went the strictly leitmotif route, he would’ve used an action version of Luke’s Theme. But he probably felt that would be too much like Chasm Crossfire or The Last Battle from ANH.  So… hey Yod’a theme will make this sound fresh!
 
I also don’t think Williams got that into the nuances of the script. Yoda was a new character for everyone to be introduced to. Remember, Yoda’s Theme has a very playful B section, no doubt reflective of the dailies Williams probably viewed of Yoda’s antics when we first meet him.  Williams didn’t write this with decades of rear view examination of Yoda’s warnings to Luke coming back to haunt him.  He wrote three major new themes for ESB, and this was an opportunity to use one of them. 
 
Fun to speculate, but I think we’re over analyzing what Williams (a normie) thought of this crazy new script. 

You sure he didn't mean to put that over the pan down to the mailbox?  The music in that scene was looped in editing, and I can easily see the shot of the dog not being in the cut Williams scored.

It's especially weird that they were so incorrect - it didn't go unused and can be heard in the final cut, it's not an "extra track". Why did they describe it that way?

The UE is the only way of listening to a mostly complete version of The Phantom Menace until the day (which may never come, at least in our lifetimes) that it will get a "definitive" edition. With all its problems but I'm still thankful we have at least that (none of the other prequels or sequels have something like this, with the possible exception of The Last Jedi and its isolated score).

This is an interesting point. The prequel trilogy, whatever its flaws, still feels relevant from a pop culture standpoint. Perhaps because a lot of people grew up with them, and perhaps because of the Disney shows and their callbacks.  But whatever the reason, it continues to be part of the popular zeitgeist. 
 
The Hobbit films, on the other hand, sort of feel like an afterthought at this point, and more or less forgotten by most outside hardcore Tolkien fandom (who generally regard them as somewhat of a disappointment). You don't see debates about The Hobbit/LOTR the way you do the PT/OT. Whatever cultural impact Jackson's films had (and it's significant) is primarily due to The Lord of the Rings. 

The POTC movies are not merely traditional pirate movies, they're Bruckheimer-produced pirate movies. So their entire visual style and tone are "rocked up", so to speak. A score in the style of HOOK would feel completely archaic and out-of-place. Laughable, even. Zimmer & co. were absolutely the right choice for these.

"I work at the piano. I don't use synthesizers or electronic equipment and all that stuff. My musical education is such that it pre-dates all of that and although I know a little bit about it, I haven't developed the skills. I use the piano, that's my old friend in music. And I proba­bly use it more for writing than any composition teacher would tell you is a good idea, but that's been my practice always. So part of my process is tactile. It's in the hands, that certainly is true. But as the score develops and as I know the material more and more, and get towards the end of the film, I use it less and less, as the music sort of begins to take over, and I become less oriented toward the keyboard."

(Quote from "A Conversation with John Williams", Tony Thomas, The Cue Sheet Vol.8 No.1, March 1991)

I haven't delved into the production of Graffiti in quite the right depth to really say. But I know the production of Star Wars pretty well, and as far as I can tell everyone on the payroll were there to help realise George's vision for the movie: so yeah, Harrison may have grumbled at some of the lines, but he did say them. And Fox may have been cracking the whip, schedule wise, but they did allow Lucas to see the film through at no particular rush. 
 
The only case I can find where a crew member went rogue on Lucas was director of photography Gilbert Taylor, who hated the gauzy look that Lucas was going for. He acquiesced to Lucas all through the Tunisia shoot, but when they got back to the UK he decided to take the gauze off during the Death Star scenes, and by the time Lucas found out they had to just roll with it. Big whuff.
 
The whole "yes-men" narrative falls apart on the fact that there's no example of Lucas ever being surrounded by "no-men."

The pan flute around 2:02 2:12 right after the brass chorale, it plays again on English horn/oboe (perhaps doubled with flute?) after the horn solo somewhere around 2:51 2:59.

A great cue, but not Anakin's theme.

A great cue, but not Anakin's theme.