Star Wars Villain Music Article

[Falstaft 2,169]

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to steer clear of JWfan and social media until TROS comes out, for fear of musical spoilers. But I did want to drop in quickly just to share an article I wrote that I think JWfan may enjoy:

 

"How John Williams’s Star Wars score pulls us to the dark side"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-john-williamss-star-wars-score-subtly-pulls-us-to-the-dark-side/2019/12/13/be3ab50e-1b7d-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html

 

Most of what I cover here is stuff a lot of you will already know (Vader's death cue, the Emperor/Augie connection, the fantastic unreleased music in ROTS Opera Scene) but even if it's not news, I bet it will still be fun seeing it in print!

 

(Also, despite my better judgment, I checked the comments on the article, and most of them are really wonderful!)

May the force be with you all!

[filmmusic 2,132]

(never mind)

Thanks for the article!

[Sunshine Reger 3,571]

.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

1 hour ago, Falstaft (hiatus til TROS) said:

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to steer clear of JWfan and social media until TROS comes out, for fear of musical spoilers. But I did want to drop in quickly just to share an article I wrote that I think JWfan may enjoy:

 

"How John Williams’s Star Wars score pulls us to the dark side"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-john-williamss-star-wars-score-subtly-pulls-us-to-the-dark-side/2019/12/13/be3ab50e-1b7d-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html

 

Most of what I cover here is stuff a lot of you will already know (Vader's death cue, the Emperor/Augie connection, the fantastic unreleased music in ROTS Opera Scene) but even if it's not news, I bet it will still be fun seeing it in print!

 

(Also, despite my better judgment, I checked the comments on the article, and most of them are really wonderful!)

May the force be with you all!

 

Wow!  Congratulations Frank!  I'll read the article later today, but man what a cool byline to see in the Post!

 

EDIT: Also you are too kind about the comments, I saw a lot of stuck-up prigs of the "Well film music isn't *real* music" and "He steals all his best stuff" variety.

[Sunshine Reger 3,571]

.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

And @Falstaft (hiatus til TROS) this is officially your theme now  

 

 

[Romão 2,311]

Great stuff, Frank, that was a joy to read (and to listen to musical examples). Great stuff

[Ludwig 1,130]

Thanks, Frank. Well written and a great read, as usual!

 

One thing that was new to me and quite convincing was the claim of Kylo Ren's theme as overcompensation for his weakness as an evildoer. From that perspective, his two themes make more even sense than I had thought: his "menacing" theme could be seen as his external theme, in other words a projection of how he would like to be viewed by others. His mask certainly plays on that idea, and that is how we see him when he is first introduced and it literally hides the face of someone who himself admits is not as filled with the dark side as he'd like to be. The music could be seen as having this same masking quality.

 

Kylo's "conflicted" theme then could be seen as his internal theme, a portrayal of how Kylo sees himself, which we all know is easily supported by Kylo's pleas to Vader's helmet the first time we hear this theme.

 

Since the film came out, I wondered why the character was given two themes, especially when the distinction between the two becomes blurred even in TFA. But with this new insight, I now think Williams' judgement has been even more bang on than I first thought! What could be more fitting for a character whose internal and external selves are divided than to give him two themes depicting these?

 

Clearly, Williams has still got it.

[lairdo 737]

Thanks for a great article. Really good and interesting ideas in here. I too had not thought about the Kylo character in relation to his themes in that manner. 

 

Great read. Thanks for writing and sharing, Frank.

[Falstaft 2,169]

Looks like I'm not the only one with thoughts on John Williams's contribution to Star Wars to make it into the Washington Post. This recent piece comes to rather different conclusions as to what counts as villainy in these scores. You can all judge for yourselves how convincing this analysis is.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/23/how-star-wars-reinforces-our-prejudices/

 

 

[artguy360 1,889]

55 minutes ago, Falstaft (hiatus til TROS) said:

Looks like I'm not the only one with thoughts on John Williams's contribution to Star Wars to make it into the Washington Post. This recent piece comes to rather different conclusions as to what counts as villainy in these scores. You can all judge for yourselves how convincing this analysis is.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/23/how-star-wars-reinforces-our-prejudices/

 

 

The historical background is interesting (I imagine not new to most members of this forum) but the most prominent "evil" themes in the Star Wars films are the Imperial March, Kylo Ren's themes, and the Emperor's Theme and all 3 are scored the the European tradition. I don't think the western = good, eastern = bad distinction is as clear as the writer argues. Nonetheless, the Star Wars scores are rooted in the classic Hollywood orchestral sound which does tend to treat things that are familiar to us in American and European orchestral language and more eastern sounds for things that are unusual, alien, mystical, and exotic. But the good vs evil = western vs eastern argument, I do not buy. Anthem of Evil and the Knights of Ren motif are two brand new examples that prove this argument to be heavily selective at best, plainly wrong at worst.

[Sunshine Reger 3,571]

There are quite a few misinterpretations, omissions, and ulterior motives in this article, on more than one level.

[Ludwig 1,130]

Williams almost certainly chose Sanskrit for Duel of the Fates (which is an action cue, not one depicting evil) because he described it as being like watching a religious ritual. And Sanskrit is a mainly liturgical language. It's also a very old language (over 3000 years), appropriate for religious-style events that supposedly happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

 

@artguy360 is right that the main baddies' music in the saga is in the European tradition. I would also add that their harmonic language is also forged in western techniques of the 20th century, namely octatonic, hexatonic, and Hungarian minor scales as the raw materials that contrast with techniques from major scales, minor scales, and modes for the good guys' music.

 

Also consider source music in the OT - swing music plays in the seedy cantina, and rock music and baroque music inhabit the underworld of Jabba's palace, and those musics are western constructions as well.

 

So no, I don't believe there's any glaring issue with the bad-guy music in Star Wars. @Falstaft (hiatus til TROS)'s Post article was miles ahead of this one.

[Score 772]

4 hours ago, Ludwig said:

Williams almost certainly chose Sanskrit for Duel of the Fates (which is an action cue, not one depicting evil) because he described it as being like watching a religious ritual. And Sanskrit is a mainly liturgical language. It's also a very old language (over 3000 years), appropriate for religious-style events that supposedly happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

 

Quote (JW's words) from the preface to the Signature Edition full score of the suite from TPM, where he talks about Duel of the Fates (bold is mine):

 

... I was captivated by the stanza "Under the tongue root a fight most dread, while another rages behind in the head". This seemed to me to be mystical and ritualistic and very appropriate to accompany the great sword fight in the film. For translation into a language that would be cryptic and obscure, I first tried Celtic and Greek, before finally, with the help of a scholar at Harvard, settling on Sanskrit. I feel this beautiful old language contained vowel sounds that would be very effective for chorus. ...

 

So, I don't see any intention to associate Eastern cultures with the bad guys in JW's work. The language was chosen because it sounded better than other (European) options, which were considered in the first instance. Then, there are scenes in the movie where Darth Maul is accompanied by the choir whispering Sanskrit words, and maybe this is what offends the writer of the article. But that is a consequence of the choice of Sanskrit for the main action piece; previous instances of Sanskrit in the movie score play the role of an anticipation, and it would have been weird to use another language. 

 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,361]

5 hours ago, Score said:

So, I don't see any intention to associate Eastern cultures with the bad guys in JW's work.

 

Temple Of Doom anyone?

 

 

[Score 772]

1 hour ago, Stefancos said:

 

Temple Of Doom anyone?

 

 

 

We are talking about Star Wars. 

 

[Smeltington 1,534]

@Falstaft (hiatus til TROS), I enjoyed the article very much! My uncle actually cut this out of the print edition and mailed it to my family, knowing we'd like it.