John Williams’ Star Wars: Thinking about Classical Music and Film
Very few soundtracks in the history of film embody their genre so completely that the genre itself becomes inseparable from the score. Star Wars, the sci-fi masterpiece of the late 1970’s, is one of these rare soundtracks. For most people, the sound of space battles and adventures is synonymous with the sound of Star Wars.
Both the films and the score itself have been endlessly referenced in pop culture. The Simpsons have referenced Star Wars so many times that the references alone could make up a feature-length film. Of their many references to Star Wars, the episode The Springfield Connection has always stood out to me. Attending a disappointing orchestral rendition of the Star Wars: Main Title, Homer remarks, “John Williams must be rolling around in his grave.” But while John Williams was, and is still, certainly not rolling around in his grave, Gustav Holst might be.
Listening to parts of the Star Wars score next to Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets, it is hard not to see some similarities. For instance, the infamous composition of John Williams’ The Imperial March or Darth Vader’s Theme recalls the vigorous rhythm of The Planets’ first movement, Mars, the Bringer of War. If you wish to listen to it yourself, see the New York Times article “Hear the Music That Inspired ‘Star Wars’” which has helpful timestamps.
These similarities, and indeed this inspiration, were not happenstance. In a rare interview in the New Yorker titled The Force Is Still Strong with John Williams, Williams recalls the moment when Stephen Spielberg first introduced him to the Star Wars project: “One day, Steven called me and said… “well, he’s [George Lucas, the director of Star Wars] got this thing called ‘Star Wars,’ and he wants to have a classical”—his term, he didn’t say Romantic—“classical score, and I’ve convinced George he should meet you.” This might explain the similarities between the Imperial March and The Planets. Holst could have been one of the composers whose work was used as a makeshift soundtrack during the filming and production of Star Wars.
George Lucas, on the other hand, through a representative, denies that he ever considered using preexisting classical pieces. In any case, it is clear that the Star Wars score was inspired by classic scores.
Of course, Holst is not the only inspiration for the Star Wars score: far from it. There are, in fact, more notable evocations of classic composers like Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, and early Hollywood composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold. As Emilio Audissino, an associate film studies professor at Linnaeus University, wrote in his book John Williams's Film Music, “the ‘Main Title,’ for example, is not only similar in spirit to many of Korngold's themes like Captain Blood; The Adventures of Robin Hood; and The Sea Hawk, but it is also almost a direct quote of the main theme of Kings Row.”
It would be unwise, however, to label the Star Wars score as a copy of Holst’s or Korngold’s works, or of any of the classical compositions Williams takes inspiration from. For starters, The Planets was composed for a very different purpose and with a different vision. Holst came to the idea of creating a musical language for each planet in the solar system, excluding Earth and Pluto, which had yet to be discovered, after studying astrology. Mars, for instance, became the Bringer of War since the planet is associated with strength and aggression - its astrological symbols are a shield and spear. The Star Wars theme evoked space battles and acted as a vessel for story-telling; it was not a contemplation on astronomy for purposes of orchestral performance.
In fact, what really makes the Star Wars score so unique from The Planets or any other classic piece it took inspiration from, is its recurring leitmotifs. A leitmotif is a musical theme that follows specific characters in an ongoing narrative, and they are an essential component of soundtracks in film. The most prominent leitmotif plays out in Darth Vader’s Theme.
When we, the audience, first see the Sith lord, the theme is menacing and militaristic. The brass instruments are played sharply and loudly. This leitmotif repeatedly features throughout the film, changing harmonically, rhythmically, and tonally, to show the character development of Darth Vader. New instruments are occasionally added, and removed. The most dramatic of these shifts comes during the scene of Darth Vader’s death when the tempo and rhythm slow to an almost wistful tune to suit the mood of a final conversation between father and son.
Star Wars is far from the only example of the integration of classical music into film. It is a recent and perhaps the most well-known example today. The real work of this practice can be attributed to the early composers of Hollywood who made the leap from purely classical compositions for orchestral performance to a sound made to support and enhance a narrative through the medium of film. Composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his contemporaries Max Steiner and Franz Waxman were responsible for pioneering the genre of film music.
While not quite as seminal in the same way early Hollywood compositions were in shaping the techniques and principles of film scoring, the music of Star Wars is no doubt influential in its own right. The boom of science fiction movies in the 1980s including E.T., Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Alien, and Terminator, owe their bombastic scores to the sound of Star Wars.
This lineage of musical inspiration teaches us to appreciate the soundtracks we listen to when we watch a movie. These compositions are part of a history of musical literacy and development. Just as Virgil learned from Homer to write his epic poem The Aeneid, John Williams learned from composers before him to craft the sound of Star Wars, the space epic. If Holst was rolling in his grave, it would be with joy. So let us kick back and watch Star Wars, relishing in this masterpiece that hundreds of years of musical inspiration have brought.