Celebration of next week's release of Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens officially begins for me tomorrow, December 12, when I give a live interview with Fox 59 in the morning, and then a presentation on "The Music of Star Wars" tomorrow afternoon:
Saturday, 12 December 2015, 8:50 a.m. Fox 59, Indiana Live TV interview on morning show. Stream the broadcast live on www.fox59.com. Saturday, 12 December 2015, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, Glendale Branch, 6101 N. Keystone Ave, Indianapolis, IN The Music of Star Wars: A Celebration of John Williams' Film Scores Often called a “space opera”, one aspect of the Star Wars films that helped make them such a pop culture phenomenon was composer John Williams' ultra-romantic orchestral score. This 90-minute multimedia presentation will showcase the music of all six movies, citing historical precedents and comparing musical influences with the twofold purpose of (1) illustrating how the music developed, and (2) enlightening listening and furthering enjoyment of the music.
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Tuesday, 3 November 2015, 6:30-8:00 p.m.
Henry Carter Hull Library, 10 Killingworth Turnpike, Clinton, CT The Music of Star Wars : A Detailed Look at John Williams' Orchestral Scores Often called a “space opera”, one aspect of the Star Wars films that helped make them such a pop culture phenomenon was composer John Williams' ultra-romantic orchestral score. This 90-minute multimedia presentation will showcase the music of all six movies, citing historical precedents and comparing musical influences with the twofold purpose of (1) illustrating how the music developed, and (2) enlightening listening and furthering enjoyment of the music. The jaunty and primitive "Parade of the Ewoks" contrasts strongly with the more sophisticated music of the other characters (though it is somewhat comparable to the jawa music from A New Hope), and bears similarities to Sergei Prokofiev's "March" from The Love of Three Oranges. The two are clearly not identical, or even near-identical (as was the case between the Star Wars Main Theme and King's Row), but there is indeed a strong resemblance. First of all, the melodies use similar pitches. For the sake of comparison, in the examples below the "Parade of the Ewoks" has been transposed to match the "March". The red lines, then, indicate identical pitches. Both the Williams and the Prokofiev use A flat frequently, and play with the note C - sometimes it's C natural, other times it's C flat. There are rhythmic similarities, as well. The rectangles in the example below show identical rhythms between the two. In addition, both excerpts conclude with a long(er) held and relatively low note, illustrated with the dotted line. Although the above illustrations only includes the first two phrases of both pieces, the similarities do continue further in. The primary melody of the "Parade of the Ewoks" is answered by a trumpet fanfare that also resembles the Prokofiev, as illustrated below. In this case, there are no definite pitches to cite, but the intervals are comparable, the rhythms are again similar, and the melodic contour very similar.
The strongest relationship, however, is not in pitches nor rhythm but rather in character - both are rather ridiculous marches (the score for "Parade of the Ewoks" is marked "A la marcia") that share tempi and border on absurdity. Orchestrationally, too, the comedy of both is heightened by the prominent use of the piccolo. While not as evident as some other Star Wars borrowings, there are undeniable similarities between "Parade of the Ewoks" and the march from The Love of Three Oranges. With that in mind, it's a pretty safe bet that George Lucas included the latter on his temp track for Return of the Jedi. Although Return of the Jedi used a wordless male chorus to enhance The Sith Theme, The Phantom Menace was the first Star Wars film to feature music with sung lyrics.
John Williams: "The great sword fight at the end of the film - the decision to make that choral was just the result of my thinking that it should have a ritualistic or quasi-religious feeling, and the introduction of a chorus might be just the thing. ... [T]he medium of chorus and orchestra would give us a sense that we're in a big temple." Here are the lyrics in full: Korah Matah Korah Rahtahmah Korah Rahtamah Yoodhah Korah Korah Syahdho Rahtahmah Daanyah Korah Keelah Daanyah Nyohah Keelah Korah Rahtahmah Syadho Keelah Korah Rahtahmah Korah Daanyah Korah Rahtahmah Korah Daanyah Korah Rahtahmah Nyohah Keelah Korah Rahtahmah Syadho Keelah Korah Rahtahmah Korah Korah Matah Korah Rahtahmah Korah Daanyah Korah Rahtahmah Nyohah Keelah Korah Rahtahmah Syadho Keelah Korah Rahtahmah Korah These words originated in the medieval Welsh poem Cad Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees). The text was translated into English by Robert Graves, and published in 1948 as part of The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. John Williams selected lines 32-35: Under the tongue root a fight most dread, and another raging behind in the head I have absolutely no idea what any of the original text means, but Williams had it translated into a variety of languages, eventually selecting Sanskrit "because of the quality of the vowels". If we read between the lines, then, John Williams liked the Sanskrit because it helped provide that "ritualistic or quasi-religious" character that was missing from other languages (and, no doubt, English in particular). As a sci-fi epic, Star Wars has appropriately adventurous and heroic music - particularly the main theme, which uses several music tricks to help establish that heroic quality.
The use of an ascending perfect fifth and triplets has a strong precedent in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, particularly in the third opera, Siegfried, which feature's the leitmotif known as "Siegfried's Theme" very prominently. In 1978, one year after the release of Star Wars: A New Hope, John Williams scored Superman and wrote a theme that bears strong similarities to the Star Wars Main Theme. Both feature very similar openings, with triplet pick ups on scale degree 5 followed by an ascending perfect fifth from 1 to 5; both employ comparable (though hardly identical) triplets. These similarities are no surprise, as both tunes needed such heroic qualities.
"Augie's Great Municipal Band", which concludes The Phantom Menace, is very strongly related to "The Sith Theme", as first heard in Return of the Jedi. "Augie's" contains two primary musical components: the melody (sung by children's chorus) and the fanfare (played by trumpets) - both of which are directly derived from "The Sith Theme". The first measure of both "The Sith Theme" and the "Augie's" melody contain three notes, the first and last of which are the same, the middle of which is comparable. The second measure of both then use different notes, but share intervallic contour (down a minor third, down a major second). The second half of the themes have less in common, although they both do use the tonic note on beats 1 and 3 of the third measure. The "Augie's" fanfare, then, adopts a similar relationship to "The Sith Theme" for its beginning (first and third notes identical, with second note comparable), followed by the same intervallic pattern (descending minor third, descending major second). Those last two notes (F# and E) are then repeated twice (so heard a total of three times - indicated in brackets at the bottom of the example below) using different fanfare rhythms. The second half of the fanfare uses a copy/paste repetition of the first 13 notes (indicated with the large rectangles in the example below), with the final three tones matching up pitches with the "Augie's" melody. The use of the modified "Sith Theme" at the conclusion of The Phantom Menace musically illustrates the true (if behind-the-scenes) victor of the film: Senator Palpatine has just been promoted to Supreme Chancellor, and it's only a matter of time before he declares himself emperor and reveals his secret identity as a Sith lord.
The four notes that conclude "Anakin's Theme" are nearly identical to the opening few notes of "The Imperial March", sharing pitches, intervals, and contour, and differing only in rhythm (and only slightly at that) and character ("Anakin's Theme", of course, doesn't have the ominous power that "The Imperial March" has). This connection is made very clear during the end credits of The Phantom Menace, in which John Williams repeats those last few notes several times in a row, as if to say, "In case you missed the foreshadowing, here it is again!" This can be heard in the YouTube video below around 7:45. I have discovered much internet forum discussion over whether or not "Across the Stars", the love theme from Attack of the Clones, is an inversion of the Star Wars main theme. Rather similar to my 2014.04.22 blog re: the Star Wars main theme being an inversion of "Born Free", this blog will be a side-by-side study and comparison of the two themes to see if there really is any truth to the notion. Here's the main theme inits original form. Click here to listen. Here's the main theme chromatically inverted. Click here to listen. Here's the main theme diatonically inverted. Click here to listen. Now compare those with "Across the Stars". Here's "Across the Stars" in its original form. Click here to listen. Here's "Across the Stars" chromatically inverted. Click here to listen. And here's "Across the Stars" in diatonically inverted. Click here to listen. Comparing all of these side-by-side, I sense no pitch relationship between either the chromatic or diatonic inversions of the Star Wars main theme and "Across the Stars". Nor do I sense any pitch relationship between either the chromatic or diatonic inversions of "Across the Stars" and the main theme. I do, however, hear rhythmic similarities, particularly in both themes' use of prominent triplets. To visually illustrate, here's an example with solid red lines showing exact rhythmic similarities and dotted red lines showing comparable similarities. All but two notes of "Across the Stars" correspond to similar or exact rhythmic values in the main theme.
Thus, while "Across the Stars" has significant rhythmic similarities to the Star Wars main theme, it is clearly NOT an inversion of the main theme. The song "Born Free", lyrics by Don Black and music by John Barry, was written for the film Born Free and released by British singer Matt Monro in 1966. Roger Williams (no relation to John) covered the song the same year it was released, for whom it was a huge hit, reaching number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. On Roger Williams' 2006 (2000?) album Pop Goes The Ivories, he states that John Williams' main theme from Star Wars is just Born Free inverted (upside down). (You can download the clip on Amazon.com, or listen for free on myspace.) Here's a transcript from the (live) recording: ROGER: You know that Star Wars is just a hit I had years ago turned up-side down? That's right. Anybody remember "Born Free"? We had a big hit on that. Well, Star Wars is just "Born Free" up-side down. I don't think you believe me. Mike, did you dig up that music? I wanna show you. Now this is the music to Star Wars. I'm gonna play it for you, then I'm gonna turn it up-side down and play it for you, and you'll see it's "Born Free". Okay? Here is Star Wars. [He plays the excerpts transcribed below.] [The audience, hearing the similarity, laughs and applauds. End transcript.] There are undeniable similarities, but, is Roger Williams actually correct in his assertion? If we take his rendition of the Star Wars main theme and turn it upside down (i.e. rotate it 180 degrees), here's what you get: click here to listen. The first two notes are similar (the interval of a descending perfect fourth), but that is the only similarity - the rest sounds nothing like "Born Free" whatsoever. An intervallic inversion is no more similar. Click here to listen. This is even further from "Born Free" than the up-side down version, due in large part to the change in tonality (it's now in F minor, where the original was in C major). But, of course, there are similarities. After all, Roger Williams' track wouldn't be funny if a listener could discern no such correlation. Those similarities, though, are not the product of inversion, but rather identical rhythms. However, he had to alter the rhythms of the Star Wars theme in order for that to be the case. Here's the theme as Roger Williams played it, with the original rhythm below: Notice that the notes are the same, but many of the rhythmic values are elongated. If those rhythms weren't altered as such, a listener would perceive no similarity between Star Wars and "Born Free", and Roger's joke would lose its humor.
Thus, Roger Williams' comment that Star Wars is "Born Free" up-side down is not accurate in the least. He makes this point in jest only. |
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