BrotherSound

And Galaxy’s Edge is the actual LSO, with William Ross conducting.

Wonderful! I’d been waiting for someone to get to this cue, since my very rudimentary skills with mocks wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Mike Matessino mentioned this was the cue he was most hoping to find when the master tapes turned up, but unfortunately it seems it never made it to the recording stage, or, as you mentioned, even got orchestrated.

Hal Leonard’s TFA suite was previewed at a convention in late-December 2015, and available to order by early February:

Fantastic stuff, and a true highlight of a score with many wonderful moments! (Wish I could say the same of the film…) Interestingly, 1:30–2:58 was either tracked or repurposed and written into this cue from music originally meant for much later in the film, 8M4 Psalm of the Sith. He did something similar in The Force Awakens, where those tense, repeating, oscillating string figures that accompany Han’s death were originally written for the firing of Starkiller base, in 5M40 (New Ending) The Beam Is Released, before Sunbeam Strings (‘The Starkiller’) was written to take its place.

So, @Jay and other Horner fans, here’s a pleasant surprise: the complete full score of Aliens, now available to pre-order: http://www.chrissiddallmusic.com/aliens.html Looks great!

The best I’ve been able to find is this version, which at least doesn’t have dialog and the sound effects at least aren’t too obnoxiously loud: By the way, @Falstaft, do I hear a bit of the Finn/chase motif in there (well, the rhythm anyway)? It wasn’t really clear enough to make out much in that section before.

The past decade proved to be a surprisingly fruitful period in John Williams' long career, with nine film scores in a wide stylistic range, including a third Star Wars trilogy with almost ten hours (!) of music recorded. And, in my opinion, it's given us ample music that compares favorably with his (or anyone else's) classic scores of the past. If John Williams had written nothing but the nine scores of the 2010s, he'd still be one of my favorite composers!

Now closing in on a year since the release, and still no Rise of Skywalker signature edition!

You’ve actually already heard a tiny bit (not that it’s a very long cue, just 30 seconds or so). The film/FYC version of The Old Death Star tracks a bit of 3M4 Quicksand from 1:16-1:23, those two atmospheric chords:

“The Bombing Run” from The Force Awakens is seamless enough that I never suspected the first nine seconds are actually tracked from a different cue, and a fairly lengthy section in the middle (which would have covered the deleted Kylo in the Falcon scene) was removed. In fact, I think the cue is actually more effective with the edit. If you watch the deleted scene, you can actually here the intended transition back into the fast music. I don’t think the music would have nearly the same feeling of forward momentum with that interruption in the middle:

I hope there turns out to be something to that rumor! He's so close to having a concerto for every major orchestral instrument, I can't help wanting JW concertos for trombone, double bass, and percussion to close the gap, and certainly few living composers know how to write as idiomatically for percussion as Williams. I personally really enjoy the Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra, so a full piano concerto would be very welcome, too.

It's not the most reliable source, but IMDb credits Frederick Lloyd, John Samuel Hanson, Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, Kris Dirksen, and Jacob Yoffee for TFA trailer music, which may include the TV ads as well as the theatrical trailers. We know John Williams did Teaser #1 himself, and I've seen the final trailer credited to Frederick Lloyd and John Samuel Hanson, but nothing specific for Teaser #2. I don't think sheet music even exists for typical modern trailer music: it's all done in sequencers and with samples. In any case, it would have been extremely unlikely anyone but JKMS would have handled score prep for something recorded for a Star Wars trailer. Professional sheet music is usually pretty bare bones and functional: there wouldn't be a full-color cover or use of a Star Wars font.

@tee_oh There's been a very limited leak of the sheet music, just the 11 cues shown above, probably barely 5% of the score, but it does include The Speeder Chase. That track consists of 3M1 and 3M3, except for the last few seconds of the album version. We're unsure if that ending is a revision, insert, ending recorded specifically for the album, or even sourced from somewhere else entirely. We also don't know yet if the OST track is micro-edited from the version in the sheet music, or if it was revised prior to recording.

This article indicates the chanting was created by the sound effects team: https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2020/02/creating-the-oscar-nominated-sounds-of-the-rise-of-skywalker.html

There's even at least one precedent in JW's own soundtrack presentations: the Always OST features both versions of Dorinda and Pete back-to-back in the same track.

Absolutely! It’d certainly be great to have both ‘The Beam Is Released’ and ‘Sunbeam Strings’ (The Starkiller) in the main TFA presentation of an expanded release, for example, because they’re so different from each other, even though they were both written for the same scene.

My dark horse pick: 2011 War Horse is utterly gorgeous, and The Adventures of Tintin is an adventure score on par with any he's written (in my humble, opinion of course). And I'm also partial to this year since it began the "Williams Renaissance" of sorts we've seen this past decade, after the relative drought of 2006-2010. And as a bonus: a fine Oboe Concerto and a substantial chamber work, the Quartet La Jolla.

We’ve had wildly different early versions released before. Superman has quite a few, the alternate Binary Sunset, etc. I don’t know why the sequel scores should be any different, if Matessino were at the helm, at least. It’d certainly be frustrating if they were excluded, with all those tantalizing bits of otherwise unused cues tracked all over the place. All three sequels would need 3-disc sets to really do them justice, with 174, 184, and 226 minutes of music recorded.

Here's the complete cue list, with approximate timings taken from the full scores: 1M1 The Great Migration 7:45 2M1 Sharptooth 8:25 3M1 The Earthquake 2:00 3M2 Whispering Winds 8:50 4M1 Foraging for Food 7:10 5M1 Journey of the Dinosaurs 8:15 6M1/2 Separate Paths 7:15 7M1 The Rescue 6:05 7M2[/8M1] Discovery of the Great Valley 6:40 8M2 End Credits 6:00 So, it appears there weren't any alternates for this score, but 5M1 and 6M1/2 are both quite lengthy unreleased cues. And it appears all the cues on the original album were already presented complete. Very excited for this one! Intrada's had quite a month between this, War of the Worlds, Prince of Thieves, and The Last Castle.

I think those are just decorative marks, with the middle one is upside down, so the title of the middle book would be on the other end. I think I can just make out “VOLUME 1” if you turn the image the other way around.

There’s not enough detail to really discern anything other than just the general lengths of the words. But the look of these is consistent with the only glimpse I’ve ever seen of the bound sketches: Based on that, I’d say it’s more likely to be: STAR WARS THE RISE OF SKYWALKER MUSICAL SCORE And based on the size of those Black Sunday and Star Wars volumes, I’d venture all three of those pictured may be for TROS, given its length relative to the original (226 minutes recorded vs. 92).

I made a simple transcription that may be useful. This is definitely quite unlike the usual accompaniment heard with Leia’s theme, which I think helps strengthen the likelihood this is an intentional allusion to Kylo’s theme:

I believe the alternate Prologue is the most notable cue not in the session leak.

Looks like the very beginning of the Jaws theme.

Ah, almost had it! Not often there's this many alternates to keep straight. Do you know what the story is with the 2 separate sketches for synth and orchestra (both 1M2)? Did JW originally intend for the opening to be synth-only and later decide to add the orchestral instruments? Looks like we can now safely say these were not recorded: Prologue Not to be confused with 1M2 Film Prologue / 1M2 Prologue Orch., this cue has no slate and is "Approx. 1:30" (as written on the sketch). It's essentially a shorter version of the Epilogue, with the same opening trumpet chords and the string part begins the same way, though it obviously doesn't continue as long. There's a brief horn solo that's unique to this cue, and it ends with a haunting trumpet solo (the sketch specifically calls for "Tim Morrison"), the same one which closes out the album version of "Refugee Status". @Jay Any idea what this was intended for? More potential album-only material? MD SC72 Bodies in the River [v1] Only the ending differs from version 2 (apparently the only one recorded). This first version repeats and fades to nothing, rather than building up at the end. 4M5 Robbie Joins the Fight Only 4M5 New seems to have been recorded, but there's only a brief section is the middle that's different at all, including the addition of that nice timpani solo moment.