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by Benjamin Chee |
from Inkpot Issue 82 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Well, coming on fifteen years now, I'm not sure whether classical afficionados do really think of Williams in the same league as Mahler or Bruckner or any of the master symphonists. To be sure, Williams has written a symphony, concertos for instruments as diverse as violin, flute, bassoon and tuba, an Essay for strings, even an early piano sonata, plus a score (excuse the pun) of fanfares and themes - which is more than most of his peers in the soundtrack industry can lay claim to. But it will be, I think we can safely say, his film music that people will remember a sesquencentennary from now. Maybe a more pertinent question to ask is: will "Star Wars" be Williams' cornerstone to fame? Perhaps - considering that The Phantom Menace is the fourth installment of a double trilogy which he has scored, and has not lost that ability to capture and hold audiences spellbound in its aural tapestry. This score was written entirely by hand in early October 1998, and recorded at Abbey Road in February 1999. Williams watched the film maybe fifty times in the course of writing music for it. The result is an underscore which is imaginatively as fresh as ever, introducing new strains of delectable melodies and leitmotifs for this installment, as well as drawing and expanding on old ones from the original trilogy.
There is, naturally, an inescapable identity to the score; a musical fingerprint, as it were, that harkens to the action-adventure themes that Williams has written for this genre. Portions of this score recall his music for the Indiana Jones tryptich and the Jurassic Park dyad. There has also always been a noticeable process of evolution in his approach to the music: Williams always attempts to break away from the musical fabric of the last film and weave a new tapestry of themes that can stand on its own. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for example, the Raiders' theme appears only twice within the movie itself. Williams, very rightly, treats audiences with a level of maturity that eschews a need to hit their "thrill buttons" with a familiar leitmotif every time something exciting occurs - and to some extent, this mentality has carried over onto The Phantom Menace. The music, like the film itself, has matured greatly over the last twenty-two years since the first installment was written. All that said, the album itself (i.e. the product as a whole, not the music per se) is far from satisfactory - considering that John Williams also produced it, apart from composing and conducting the music. Critical portions of music - such as Anakin's farewell to his mother, the arrival of the Jedi Knights on the Neimodian battleship, and portions of the celebratory party piece at the end - are missing and the tracks which are presented are, not surprisingly, out of chronological order. Some of the cues have also presented as concert versions, and not "as was" in the film.
However, in view of the reception of the special edition soundtracks of the original trilogy, which not only restored cues missing from the original soundtrack albums, but presented them in sequential order as they appeared in the movie, one might be tempted to ask then - why wasn't this the case for The Phantom Menace ? I have no idea, but my guess is that Williams wanted to put out, for its initial release, what he felt was the best presentation of the music from The Phantom Menace. Going by the experience of the original soundtracks, it is fait accompli that we will see a special release of The Phantom Menace soundtrack sometime later, with all the cues direct from the film and in the correct chronological order. Not to mention, of course, the duplication of profit that Sony Music will make when fans are forced to buy the new edition. Meanwhile, though, movie music fans will just have to settle with what's available on hand. So much for the album, and on to the music itself. Williams, as mentioned above, has introduced new leitmotifs and uses only fragments of themes from the former movies. This results in a refreshingly new score, lively and exuberant, one that sets the mood of the prequel without getting careworn. There are also hints of themes "to come", this being, after all, the prequel - Anakin's theme, in particular, begins as an innocent idyll that been contrived, by ingenious turns of musical phrases and rhythmic change of notes, to end on the last four notes of the "Imperial March" (aka Darth Vader's theme). The melodic line of "Augie's Great Municipal Band", appearing at the conclusion of the movie, is actually a cleverly disguised major key transposition of the Emperor's theme. (Unlike some other soundtrack composers, Williams stays very much in the classical vein and does not normally work with pop artists to produce alternative soundtrack albums with music "inspired by" the movie, or in different flavours, e.g. "Nashville version". Fans of the soundtrack genre have him, and George Lucas, to thank that there will be no overrated pop stars belting out a maudlin hit along the lines of "The Force Will Go On").
Intro to that big choral number in
So what were they singing in "Duel of the Fates" ?
Sanskrit lyrics? Khara Matha Khara Rath Amah
Was it then also Sanskrit at Qui-Gon's funeral ? Mahdhurah swehpna
What do they mean ?
Khara dreadful
This memorable piece comes with a pulsating five-note ostinato that is handed, rather exuberantly, from the low strings to the middle brasses to the high woodwinds, with the main theme weaving in-between sung as a huge choral accompaniment - I'm not even going to draw allusions to Orff here - to words from a bastardised Sanskrit translation of a Celtic poem. Interestingly, there is a second underscoring for the duel (on track 15 of the album), which contains a quiet moment with the choir whispering the same lyrics over high strings.
(Lyric bastardisation, or cutting-and-pasting phrases in a foreign language with scant regard for semiotic meaning or context, is not new to Williams' music. For the big choral number in "Empire of the Sun", "Exsultate Justi", the text was cobbled up from Latin phrases taken from various parts of orthodox Catholic masses. Not that anyone really noticed, of course.)
Queen Amidala does not have her own leitmotif (notwithstanding, of course, that she easily outdresses everyone else in the movie) - track 13, which is titled "Queen Amidala and The Naboo Palace" instead reprises Anakin's theme. Not very much music was spotted for her, but this will surely be rectified when her romance blossoms in the next two installments. On the other hand, even Jar Jar Binks has his own comical melodic figure on woodwinds (known among music fans, not ironically, as "droid music", after a similar-sounding cue from the earlier movies); even aforesaid Naboo Palace has a four-note motif.
"The Flag Parade" (second part of track 7) harks back to the fanfares and festive themes for which Williams is a household name. What serious movie fans will appreciate, under all this bombast and heavy brass, is a wry musical tip-of-the-hat to an identical scene from an all-time classic: the "Parade of the Charioteers" from Ben Hur (by Miklòs Ròzsa) as an allegory of the podracing arena at Mos Espa. The disappointing thing is, on this album, the march peters out rather tamely - almost as if the cue was continuing, albeit in a different musical direction, which the producers deemed not for release.
One curious sequencing of music deserves mention here: after the opening titles on track 1, the music segues directly into "The Arrival at Naboo", an edited cue which in and of itself is unremarkable. However, and this is where one wonders what the producers were smoking in the editing studio, this cue is fecklessly repeated in its exact entirety later in track 13 (the second portion of "Queen Amidala and The Naboo Palace"). And this is all notwithstanding the fact that in the movie, the musical accompaniment for the arrival of the Republic cruiser at Naboo was a different (and hitherto unreleased) track.
Another cue which has raised some contention comes in the final track, "Augie's Great Municipal Band", which leads into the "End Credits". It has been likened to the childish Ewok music of "Return of the Jedi" and accused of incongruity. It all comes down to a matter of taste and preference - personally, I find it a fun (yes, fun) way to end the show on a high note. After all, having already endured the presence of the character of Jar Jar Binks for the last two hours, this music cannot be any worse.
The end titles deserve mention here as well. It is fairly lengthy, weighing in at a hefty 8 minutes 14 seconds, comprising the Star Wars theme followed by repetitions of "Duel of the Fates" and "Anakin's Theme". In the movie, there is an ominous breathing (á là Darth Vader) at the conclusion of the music - presumably Williams didn't ask for it in his score, because here on disc it is omitted.
The remainder of the tracks are alternations between music for "scene-setting visuals" and action (read: fighting). Tracks in the former category include "Jar Jar's Introduction and The Swim to Otoh Gunga" (track 4), "The Arrival at Tatooine and The Flag Parade" (track 7) and "Queen Amidala and the Naboo Palace" (track 13); tracks in the latter include "The Sith Spacecraft and The Droid Battle" (track 5), "Anakin Defeats Sebulba" (track 9), "Panaka and the Queen's Protectors" (track 12) and "Qui-Gon's Noble End" (track 15).
Maybe I'm being too invidious to point out so many faults in what would otherwise be a flawless musical underscore to the most anticipated movie of the year. And so it is, musically - Williams has produced an orchestral and choral tour de force that draws from classical idioms, building upon previous scores reinventing music for an epic space-opera. And all this, despite all the technical shortcomings of this album, too. We can only wait for the complete soundtrack to appear.
Benjamin Chee thinks that
if you like someone well enough, you should also be able to tell them
about that dab of sauce on their lower lip. He has also published six
articles on the technology of Star Wars in independent sci-fi journals.
Benjamin wishes to also thank Vishrut for his help in "Duel of the
Fates". Kudos to Benjamin Chee for the very balanced and insightful
review of TPM album. It is a far more intellectual and musically
informed critique compared to the many other "pop" perspectives
criticizing the music for lack of 'recognizable' tunes, a simplistic
and musically impoverished view. However, more should be said of the
wonderful choral and orchestral performance of the LSO & London
Voices. I was in London last year when Williams conducted the LSO in
2 hours of his music at the Barbican and announced to the audience
about his reunion with the LSO this Feb. I must add, the LSO was
unbelievably electricfying. Can you imagine the Brasses blazing
through Star Wars to the Olympic Fanfare without any sign of fatigue
for 2 over hours. Only a few orchestras can manage that feat.
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It uses an identical orchestration from the previous Star Wars soundtracks, with greater use of synthesizers to augment certain instrument parts. Williams also utilises choral accompaniment very heavily - more in this movie alone than the previous three combined - in an attempt to achieve what he has described as a "quasi-spiritual setting". It does not quite reach the pathos of a 
It could be argued that all this is the result of how Williams has chosen to present this music for its first commercial release: cues were chosen to represent the music in the best possible way (which includes doing concert versions of film music) and arranged to produce an optimal aural experience for the listener - which is to say, pretty much how movie music is packaged and sold these days.
"Duel of the Fates", a concert arrangement of the climatic lightsaber duel music (this cue does not appear in its entirety in the film, save in the end titles), is probably the biggest "hit tune" on this soundtrack - being also the subject of a "making of" music video, complete with scenes of Williams and the London Symphony and London Voices at the recording sessions, bluescreen visuals of the actors and behind-the-scenes footage of the film crew at work, intercut with clips from the actual movie.
(Speaking of which, listing track 15 as such was the worst giveaway spoiler when the album initially appeared, for those who hadn't yet watched the movie. Not since "Presumed Innocent" was such a blatant faux perpetrated - coincidentally, also a Williams score.)
Unnatural Acts of Opera - by La Cieca