George and John*

Where were you when you first heard this?

The first time I really remember resonating with this song was when The Phantom Menace (i.e. movie that must not be named #1) came out. I was in the theaters, totally pumped up, and this music started. The theater erupted in cheers. It was electric!

While George Lucas was making Star Wars: A New Hope, he had a soundtrack all figured out. He wanted a large, over-the-top score and, like Stanley Kubrick , had a whole list of classical music songs that he wanted playing in the background. But his pal, Steven Spielberg, recommended that he use this composer Spielberg had worked with on the Indiana Jones series, John Williams.

So George asked John for help, and movie magic was born.

When it comes to classical inspiration in the modern world, George and John had a huge list of composers they pulled from. In my last post I talked about “The Imperial March” and The Planets. But it wasn’t just Holst that inspired Williams.

C3PO and R2D2 are lost in the desert on Tatooine, with an eerie, haunting soundtrack that underscores their isolation.

Compare it to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring** (premiered 1913).

George Lucas considered Star Wars a space opera. While there’s not much singing in Star Wars, (here’s Harrison Ford singing a little song, if you’re curious what that would sound like), music does play a major part. Lucas himself says that Williams’ music quickly became central to the story itself: “About 90 per cent of the Star Wars films are music. It’s done in a very old-fashioned style, as silent films, so that the music kind of tells the story.” (From the Telegraph)

Next, take a listen to this clip from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet. Does it sound, in places, a little like a bunch of furry animals in the forest?

While the comparison isn’t as obvious as some of the others, you can definitely hear echoes of Prokofiev in the music for the Ewoks. Who doesn’t love the Ewoks???

One of the techniques that John Williams used is called lietmotif. This is an operatic composition technique where there is a specific musical theme for each character. The "Imperial March" is the theme for Darth Vader. If you listen to "Anakin’s Theme" in the “movies that must not be named”, you can hear that John Williams works The "Imperial March" into the theme as a musical foreshadow. Over the course of the 9 movies to date, John has composed over 50 themes to go with George’s characters.

For my last example, we have Carmina Burana.

"O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff is a little like "Sunrise" from Also Sprach Zarathustra. You’ve heard it a million times, but you may not have known what the music was. And it may have reminded you of some something. You cannot deny that "Duel of the Fates" is the best scene from the “movies that must not be named” and has the best background music to boot, and that John Williams was heavily influenced by Orff when he wrote it.

George had the idea, along with the classical music inspiration, and John created true movie magic***. The music from the Star Wars saga has arguably become the most recognized soundtrack of all time. John Williams received 26 award nominations for the work as a whole, and won 10 of those awards.

*Not the Beatles. Sorry.
**Did you know there was a riot in the hall the first time The Rite of Spring was performed? It’s not just nowadays that people get offended!
***If you want to find out just how much of a difference the music makes to the movie, check out this article which has videos of the movie without the music. George wasn’t kidding when he said the music is everything.