The Last Jedi Soundtrack Musical Analysis: Catalog of Themes

I saw The Last Jedi for a second time on Tuesday. I took 21 pages of notes (I know, I'm a nerd) on the music and how it relates to the story so I can update my "Music of Star Wars" presentation. Here is a working catalog of all the themes used in the film. Starting tomorrow, I will use this catalog as a reference as I dissect and analyze the soundtrack.
​
Most of the thematic (meaning non-incidental) music reprises themes from previous films.

Reprized from A New Hope:

• The Main theme

• The Rebel fanfare

• The Force theme

• Leia's theme
  

• TIE Fighter Attack

​Reprized from The Empire Strikes Back:

• Imperial March

• Han Solo and the Princess

• ​Yoda's theme

Reprized from Return of the Jedi:

• Luke and Leia

• The Sith theme

Reprized from The Force Awakens:

• The March of the Resistance

• Rey's themes (considered below)
• Kylo Ren's themes (considered below)
• Poe's theme​ (?)

• Jedi Steps (Luke's theme?)

The Force Awakens implied that the Jedi Steps theme is Luke's theme (there were only two characters in that final scene and Rey already has her music, so it seems reasonable that Jedi Steps is Luke's theme), but The Last Jedi did little to confirm or deny that. We do hear the theme a couple of times, but only at the beginning. If this really is Luke's theme, why don't we hear it throughout the film when we see Luke? It should be heard during Luke's battle with Kylo Ren for sure. So I'm still puzzled as to exactly what this theme means.

The March of the Resistance undergoes the most musical development throughout The Last Jedi. It is constantly fragmented, twisted, turned, and pulled in all sorts of directions depending on the narrative function at any given moment.

Poe's heroic theme features much less prominently in The Last Jedi than the March of the Resistance. It's still there, but it's much more subtle (I didn't even notice it the first time I saw the film) and doesn't carry the same weight. I'm a bit confused, though, as to why. Poe plays a major role throughout The Last Jedi, so why don't we hear Poe's theme more?

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, notice how Rey's and Ren's themes are plural. It's because both characters have multiple parts to their music.

Rey's music has five components:

• The tip-toe motive sounds sneaky and delicate

• The chime motive sounds like bells (and is often played by bells)   ​

• The big melody, this is the type of ultra-romantic sweeping melody Williams is so famous for writing
  

• The regal motive – there's something royal-sounding about this one
  

• And lastly, the counter melody
  

And Ren's music, though not quite as dense as Rey's, has several component parts, as well:

• The power motive, heard when Ren is portrayed as a strong character who relentlessly pursues his goals. It often immediately follows the wannabe motive documented below.
  

• The wannabe motive, whose i-bvi harmony is reminiscent of Vader's Imperial March, is heard when Ren is portrayed as a weak character. It's a dissonant octatonic melody symbolic of his anxiety over not being as strong as his grandfather.
  

• The brooding motive also highlights Ren's anxieties, though it's less obvious than the wannabe motive.
  

It's also worth mentioning how most of Rey's music and all of Ren's music is motivic rather than melodic. A motive is a short but memorable musical phrase, where melodies tend to be longer. Rey's chime motive, for example, is two measures long and uses seven notes. Rey's melody, by contrast, lasts for six measures and uses 14 notes. I was expecting (and hoping) for musical development of these brief motives for both Rey and Ren in The Last Jedi. I have to admit I was disappointed when that didn't happen. Nevertheless, music for both characters permeates the film – it's just that they're always more or less the same as what was heard in The Force Awakens.

Okay, so there are the themes from The Last Jedi that were reprized from previous episodes. Now for the new themes.

The most prominent is Rose's theme, which has two parts:

• Rose's primary theme is the big melody and the contribution that I'll be adding to my “Music of Star Wars” presentation.

It rather similar to the opening phrase of the Force theme...

...  and to Anakin's theme from The Phantom Menace...

… and even to David Newman's theme from the 1999 film Galaxy Quest.

I suppose this could mean that Rose is related to the force, or to Anakin (or to Dr. Lazarus!), but I suspect these similarities are little more than coincidence. All of these themes use scale degrees 5-1-2 and most use 3 in their melodies, which is a cliche of western music - there are a great many more themes that use this pattern, far too many to list here.

Moving along....
​

• Rose's secondary theme is much less prominent. It's heard far less frequently in the film and soundtrack, but is nevertheless worthy (thought just barely) of distinction from the primary theme.

In addition to Rose, there are a few more new themes:

• A minor-key sarabande.
  

• A crying motive that usually follows the sarabande.
  

• A rhythmically unstable desperation motive, which lacks a downbeat and juxtaposes duple and triple division of beats.

• A last-ditch fanfare that seems to flirt with disaster

Frankly, I'm not entirely sure what all these new themes mean. I suspect it will become more clear as I continue digesting the soundtrack. If anybody out there has ideas, please comment!

So there are all the themes and motives I gathered from a second viewing of The Last Jedi. It's quite likely that I'll discover more bits of new music as I continue digesting, but I believe these are all the major new contributions to the Star Wars musical universe.

Now it's time to turn to the soundtrack specifically. I noticed quite a few discrepancies between the film's soundtrack and the album soundtrack (for example, the soundtrack's finale employs Yoda's theme while the film omits it).
​
The soundtrack consists of 20 tracks. I will endeavor to write 20 more blogs, one per track, over the next month, leading up to my “Music of Star Wars” presentations in January 2018, which will debut new commentary on Episode VIII's music.