Music in Star Wars

Television, Movies Games and Books Star Wars
#21

First let me preface this by telling you all that I was 7 in 1977 & saw Star Wars as kind of a fluke. My neighbors & their kids were going to see it and asked ifmy sister & I wanted to go. We went, it was the first real movie I remember ever seeing & I was sitting there in awe the entire movie.

My history of Star Wars music is as follows:

When Iw as a child taking piano lessons I learned the Star Wars theme for my first recial piece, I believe I was 8 or 9.

There is a restaurant in Grand Rapids Michigan that has an old time theater organ with all the additions throughout the restaurant, horns, pipes, the works. We went there a few times when Iw as a kid & I would always ask them to play Star Wars, they told me it was one of the few songs that used every thing they had on that organ. It was supremely powerful just having that music thumping in your chest. Incidentally we went back there about 10 years ago & I asked them to play it he said he hadn’t been asked to play it in quite a while. It was even more powerful for me then than it was when I was a kid.

I have the Star Wars cd box set that I bought when it came out in the late 90’s I think? I still pull it out on a regular basis.

I have a portion of the Star Wars theme as my ring tone, it’s not the beginning portion it’s the part that follows the most famous part of it. I am on the lookout for the Imperial March when/if I get an SD chip for my phone!

I never get tired of the Imperial March, I can & have listened to it repeatedly for days.

I ahve always wanted to go to see an orchestra perform famous movie scores. Thank you Topgun I think I now know where my vacation will be next year!

#22

For those interested in seeing John Williams conducting the LA Philarmonic (with probably the 1h long Star Wars Symphony), you should definitively go to the Hollywood Bowl on August 29 and 30 if you’re the area. I went back in 2003 and it was really great :slight_smile: You can still get tickets at $10 which are not close to the stage but the acoustic of the place is amazing for an outdoor amphitheater (with a nice view on the Hollywood hills and Mulholland Drive)

#23

thanks, Yorick! I hadn’t heard about that

#24

The music in the Star Wars films has always been a high point for me when I watch them.

  • The music when Qui-Gon is trying to cut through that door definitely had the feeling of the OT.
  • The blasting of the Imperial March when Palpatine is looking over the clones at the end is so guttural it made me go back to watch it a couple more times in theatre just to hear it again - there’s a lot more lowend instruments in that presentation of Imperial March than anywhere else in the movies.
  • The first few minutes of ROTS is great, except where they end it abruptly to artoo’s beeping. The rush of trumpets as the whole battle comes into view is amazing.
  • Order 66 music, when Yoda drops his cane. Awesome.

Gotta go back and watch the OT, been a long time since I’ve watched them…

#25

Like Aset, I was a mere single digit in age when I saw Star Wars in 1977. This thread is a wonderful trip of nostalgia.

I spent the next several years–more than I care to admit–acting out the movie as the double-LP set played on my father’s hi-fidelity stereo system. Our hallway doubled as the Tantive IV corridor where my Rebel colleagues paid the ultimate price. Our sofa was perfect for the cross-cutting between the Millenium Falcon cockpit and gun turrets–I could bounce around with each blaster hit.

No orchestra, to my ears, can match the sound of the LSO from the recordings sessions. That opening fanfare chord, and its relationship to Newman’s 20th Century Fox Fanare, is unforgettable.

Today, I recognize and share with my students the amazing parallels between certain cues and the music of Stravinsky and Holst; but what a great intro to Williams’ predecessors!

#26

well my two favorite songs from the movies are from the prequels. (the grownups are ashamed) lol. but i like Battle Of the heroes. and also Duel Of the Fates. i saw both live. Duel Of the fates was in tanglewwod. FRAKKING AWSOEME. and also I heard Battle of the heroes at the BSO

#27

So I can’t believe I’ve only just noticed this thread. I credit John Williams’ Star Wars score as setting me on the road that would eventually lead me to a life in music. Until I’d seen Star Wars I’d never heard an orchestra and didn’t know that instrumental music could be so compelling. Obviously, I’ve moved on to other styles and I’ve not always been a fan of Williams’ scores (though he is, bar none, the most accomplished composer working in Hollywood–though I believe our own Bear McCreary is his heir apparent of sorts. Mark my words) but the Star Wars scores will always have a place in my heart for instilling in me my first love for instrumental “classical” music.

As to my favorite cue/cut: the Asteroid Field sequence in Empire. That’s got my favorite music of any of the six films.

#28

I would challenge that. That title belongs to Jerry Goldsmith in my mind. All the big scores that Williams did, Indiana, Star Wars, they all sound if not alike, then they have similar qualities, whereas Goldsmith is one of those very few composers who does not have one single recognizable style, he really wrote very different music for very different movies.

#29

working, as in currently. Goldsmith, sadly, no longer qualifies

#30

Oh. Right. I missed that. I’m taking it back.

#31

I am not a real adult, but was a big fan of the OT long before the prequels arrived, and I still agree with you for the most part. Yes, the OT music is pretty awesome and I love it, but I think Williams did some great things with I-III that did a lot to save those movies from total craaaap. Places where the dialogue and acting should have conveyed the emotions had to rely too heavily on the music, and Williams delivered. Good stuff all around.

#32

no more reading the forum without contacts for you, sweetie. bad things tend to happen. fortunately not this time :wink:

#33

Please forgive me:

//youtu.be/wEUKBsG8FhI

#34

Is Goldsmith still working, though? I thought he’d retired by now.

#35

That’s what I thought. I was right, then, in thinking that he was no longer with us?

#36

Actually, the score to The Phantom Menace is pretty nice and very deeply worked out as far as leitmotifs and other such relationships go. If you can pick up the Episode I “Ultimate” Soundtrack (I think that’s what it’s called. It’s the only two disc edition to be produced for the prequels so far) it really is a treat.

The score to Attack of the Clones is, to me, a bit disappointing, I think, in that the last hour or so is all cuts from the Phantom Menace score spliced in rather inappropriately (but then, in a movie that is an editorial mess, that seems strangely appropriate).

#37

I’m totally in agreement with you. Maybe it would be more coherent if we had, ahem, the extended score… but as it is, it’s not nearly as good as TPM or, in my opinion, ROTS.

(and I’ve been meaning to post about the OT soundtracks… but I haven’t had the time to re-listen to them!! I’ll get to it eventually… I like having an excuse to do it!)

#38

Don’t know about you, but I think this is a pretty frakin’ good piano adaptation?

//youtu.be/WvBGVXTWgmg

#39

As much as I love the music of Star Wars (and I love it) The music from Superman: The Movie is the one I cherish the most. I watched that movie for the first time when I was 5 and to this day I still get chills when I listen to the score. I used to tie a towel around my neck and go swooshing around the house to the opening theme.