Empire Strikes Back Music Paper

Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

Score Analysis

Mike Peters

207292006

March, 26th, 2012

Music in Film

Prof: Mark Eisenman

Star Wars V is masterfully composed and orchestrated; this is thematic writing at its peak. There are 4 Themes used in the film: The Main Star Wars Theme/Good Guys theme (A1 & A2), Darth Vader’s theme/Imperial March (B), Hans Solo and Leia’s Theme (C), and Yoda’s theme (D). There is also various action music throughout the score, and mysterious space/force music.

John Williams during the composing process: “It’s an action movie, so I have active music, fast, quick tempos, orchestral flourishes, it’s notey, so that it’s a tremendous physical job of just getting the notes down, I’m a little edgy about having done only 8 mins this week.”

In this paper I will prove qualitatively and quantitatively how “Johnny [Williams] is very good at finding a point of view for the scene and augmenting the emotion that’s there.” One particularly great example of this is the carbon freeze scene. It’s a love scene, a scene that leads to a kiss between Hans Solo and Leia. The music is a very important part of it, integral to the scene, because there are only about 7 lines of dialog, and “basically the music is the dialog in that particular scene, it tells us what she’s feeling, because actually the 2 people are in open conflict, but the music says what you’re seeing is maybe conflict yes, but that’s a game because I think they’re falling in love.” Hans and Leia’s theme is used in the score here to maximum effect. The psychological and emotional undercurrents are entirely directed by the music, and we get a sense of their love growing.

To understand the scope of John Williams’ thematic writing in the Empire Strikes Back I’m going to take you through the score chronologically, highlighting the repetitive use of the themes and for what reason Williams’ employs them. I was astonished at the frequency of their recurrence and the...