Star Wars: A New Hope: (John Williams) No single orchestral score has had more of an influence on the history

of movies and its film music element than the original Star Wars. At a time when the Silver Age of film music had emphasized smaller orchestras and pop style genres of music in film, it was feared by long-time film score collectors that the glory days of Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia had passed. Ironically, composer John Williams had been a part of that modernizing trend of music for films when he, in the first ten years of his career, was known as "Johnny Williams" and was well respected for his jazz and musical works. But in the 1970's, Williams began the film score renaissance back in the direction of the large orchestras and sweeping themes. His disaster scores of the early 70's often combined his orchestral and pop influences together, as heard popularly in The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, and in 1975, Williams' Jaws won him his first dramatic score Oscar and for film buffs, ushered in the renaissance for good. It wasn't until his trio of famous adventure/fantasy scores in the late 1970's, though, that the public fully embraced the move. With Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Superman revealed to audiences within a year's time, Williams cemented thematic orchestral works as the must-have for studios of Hollywood's Bronze Age (largely consisting of the 1980's in the last years of the pre-digital era). Williams' Star Wars alone would become the most popular soundtrack of all time, selling many millions of copies and mirroring the film in its cult following. Perhaps baffling to collectors today, the title theme of Star Wars was so popular that a disco dance version of it was pressed and heard frequently in clubs for the subsequent year after the film's release. As a film, the impact of Star Wars doesn't need much discussion. Breaking the box office records set by Jaws after just six months, George Lucas' exciting universe broke all the normal bounds of science-fiction on the big screen. To the delight of the world, Lucas announced that Star Wars was the fourth installment in a series of nine episodes, and with the sequels set for production, a saga was born. It may seem elementary by post-2000 standards of film music composition, but the use of a prominent title theme and several leitmotifs in 1977 was a refreshingly bold move back to the Wagnerian influence of Hollywood's Golden Age. In other words, the existence of so many memorable themes, and their masterful placement throughout the film for individual characters and settings was a somewhat novel concept at the time. After five takes on the first day of recording sessions, Williams and Lucas combined three of them to form the "Main Titles" that we are so familiar with today. Along with the fanfare came two primary motifs: one for 'the force' and another for Princess Leia's character. Other minor ideas would manifest themselves for the Death Star (the preImperial March theme for the Empire... one that would completely disappear in sequels), the various creatures of Tatooine, and one for rebel alliance heard at the end of the film. Of all these ideas, only the title theme and 'force' theme would remain prevalent in all of Williams' sequel and prequel scores, with Leia's theme incorporated to a lesser degree in the classic trilogy. Williams' ability to shift between these themes, in their various states of volume and completeness, is what truly captured audiences at the time. For people discovering the original Star Wars scores today, it may be the dominant memorability of each individual theme that causes such fan attachment, but if you take Star Wars: A New Hope as a whole and enjoy its lesser-known cues, you'll hear the real reason why the score was such a success. A cue like "Tales of a Jedi Knight/Learn about the Force" (in which Ben Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker of the force in his home and the two then watch the Princess' message) contains so many of the themes in magical, conversational context that you realize that Williams' music for the

series doesn't require bombast for the same effective utilization of the Wagnerian concepts. This is not to say, however, that bold statements of theme in Star Wars aren't worthy of their place in history; the "Throne Room" cue alone, with its ultra-heroic brass of truly epic proportions, is a piece that remains awe-inspiring decades later, especially when heard in live concert quality. The "Imperial Attack" cue follows a similar history, representing the monumental scope of the swashbuckling spirit that Star Wars generates.