Music of Star Wars
The music for the primary feature films (which serves as the basis for the rest of the related media) was written by John Williams.
The music for several animated and live-action television series spin-offs has been written by Kevin Kiner, Ludwig Göransson, Natalie Holt, Nicholas Britell, and Ryan Shore.
[4] Kiner continued his work with the franchise for the animated series Star Wars Rebels (2014–2018), which also incorporates Williams' themes.
Shirley previously provided additional music for the first two seasons and used Göransson's themes to compose the score for The Book of Boba Fett.
Indeed, Lucas maintains that much of the films' success relies not on advanced visual effects, but on the simple, direct emotional appeal of its plot, characters and, importantly, music.
[11] Lucas originally wanted to use tracked orchestral and film music in a similar manner to 2001: A Space Odyssey, itself a major inspiration for Star Wars.
This resulted in several nods or homages to the music of Gustav Holst, William Walton, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky in the score to Star Wars.
A leitmotif (or leading motive) is a recurring, evolving musical theme for narrative elements such as characters, locations, ideas, sentiments, objects or other specific part of the film.
[g] Of chief importance for a leitmotif is that it must be strong enough for a listener to latch onto while being flexible enough to undergo variation and development along the progression of the story.
A good example of this is the way in which Williams subtly conceals the intervals of "The Imperial March" within "Anakin's Theme" in The Phantom Menace, implying his dark future to come.
Film music, however, typically needs to strike a balance between the number of leitmotifs used, so as to not become too dense for the audience (being preoccupied with the visuals) to follow.
[16] John Williams sketched the score for his various orchestrations and wrote the music for a full symphony orchestra (ranging from 79 to 113 players overall[i][18] The Empire Strikes Back required 104 players, not including the conductor or synthesizer (rhttp://www.jw-collection.de/scores/tesblp.htmecalls Archived August 7, 2017, at the Wayback Machine) due to the inclusion of a fourth flute, and sections that required a third harp, five oboes overall, an added piccolo and eight percussionists overall.
If the Empire Strikes Back is to augmented with the string section size of Revenge of the Sith or the Skywalker Symphony Recording, it would require about 112 players and a small women choir.
[k] Nevertheless, due to added high woodwinds and percussion parts, scores such as Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones call for 106 and 110 players, respectively.
In live performances, the forces are usually greatly reduced: Official Star Wars Concerts were held with as little as 60-piece orchestras and 50-piece mixed choral ensembles or with the choir omitted altogether.
[19] [m] However, to recreate the nine scores as they were originally recorded, the following instrumentation would be needed: John Williams wrote a series of themes and motifs for certain characters and ideas in each of the Star Wars films.
The multiple installments allowed Williams to compose some sixty or seventy themes and reprise some of them extensively, continually developing them over a long period of screen time.
As a result of his compositional process, a large number of incidental musical material and themes that are specific to certain setpieces also occur throughout the piece.
Princess Leia's Theme is used for the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars, which has little to do with her character even though she is present in the scene.
Williams' original composition for the Geonosis Battle Arena in Attack of the Clones, a variation on the Droid Army March, was used for the Utapau assault in Revenge of the Sith.
Musical similarities exist between the final scenes of The Phantom Menace with Finn's confession to Rey in The Force Awakens, probably a result of temp-track choice.
Listed below are about 67 leitmotifs, based on primarily on Williams own notes and Frank Lehman's extensive catalogue, but also on Doug Adams et al analyses of the scores.
For instance, his use of tritones often denotes mystery, a device he uses for the droids landing on Tatooine and again in the concert arrangement of "The Throne Room.
Williams also re-edited some of his existing cues after the fact in order to "concertize" theme on the behest of conductors such as Charles Gerhardt.
[89] In addition to the orchestral scope that was brought on by John Williams' musical score, the Star Wars franchise also features many distinguishing diegetic songs that enrich the detail of the audio mise-en-scène.
[106] The British Phonographic Industry certified Star Wars and Episode I as Gold for shipments of over 100,000 units in the UK.
