12/16/2023 0 Comments Dauntless black screenThe orchestra is today such an indelible part of the Star Wars sound that it seems impossible to imagine it without it, but in 1977 this was a radical choice that signalled what type of film audiences were dealing with. The music had to be emotionally recognisable, certainly, but it also had to help tell the film’s story. “I did not want to hear a piece of Dvorak here, a piece of Tchaikovsky there, and a piece of Holst in another place,” wrote John Williams in the original soundtrack’s liner notes. Though director Lucas had initially thought to use classical pieces of music like Stanley Kubrick did for 2001: A Space Odyssey a decade earlier, Williams instead suggested a musical world in the palate of the orchestral greats, but bent to the narrative world of the film. It is now one of the most widely-known melodies on earth. It’s hopeful, even naïve in the way it continues to rise and lift, attacking the highest note in the melody again and again, like the dauntless and optimistic Luke Skywalker. Then, there’s that melody, the main theme for the whole Star Wars franchise. “It was the first sound I heard from Maurice, really," said John Williams in 2007. That opening blast was his first note in a 30-year career with the orchestra. The legendary Maurice Murphy had his first day as principal trumpet with the London Symphony Orchestra when they recorded the opening title. Maybe the biggest B-flat chord ever to grace the screen announces the beginning of the movie, matching the similarly huge on-screen logo, which immediately recedes into a sea of stars, as though daring us to chase it. B-flat is the key of Newman’s fanfare, and B-flat is the key of Star Wars.Īfter the fanfare, and a beat of silence - “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….” - enter John Williams. In other words, it’s the perfect curtain-raiser for Star Wars, and John Williams - aged 45 in 1977 and self-consciously moulding his musical style after the Hollywood masters like Newman before him - took note. It’s big and brassy, and its semi-militaristic sound announces the beginning of each film it is attached to with old-school pomp. ![]() The early relationship with Fox was strained - not helped by reports that Lucas had spent an inordinate sum of money to create computerised special effects with only three usable shots returned after a year - but the studio provided at least one bit of Star Wars iconography in the form of its studio logo, with Alfred Newman’s 1933 musical fanfare. It all begins with a fanfare, and not one written by John Williams.Īfter a series of bad deals, bad blood, a major flop (1971’s THX 1138), and a major hit ( American Graffiti, from 1973), young hotshot director George Lucas had burnt his way through the big Hollywood studios before arriving at 20th Century Fox. ![]() Its legacy even extends beyond the multiplex, too, as it has motivated generations of musicians and composers alike to pick up an instrument for the first time and noodle out a galactic melody, such is its power.īut when John Williams sat down all those years ago to write music for what he saw as a children’s film, directed by the oddball Hollywood outsider George Lucas, it was by no means assured to be such an all-consuming cultural force. For many fans, the music is a nostalgic shortcut to their youth and the moment they first saw a Star Wars film, or even a kind of access point to a shared sense of mythology. ![]() More than any other film series, Star Wars firmly lodged the orchestra in the minds of millions as what Hollywood should sound like. Star Wars changed the movies, it changed popular culture, and it changed the sound of cinema.
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