Thursday, November 14, 2013

Creative Borrowing in The Score of The Star Wars Series and Wagner’s Ring


A film score is background music, or incidental music or film music. The star wars series and Wagner’s ring are very successful films. Contributing to their great success is the music in the films.  These films are said to have brought back the symphonic score trend to the modern screen. Being the pioneers of reviving the symphonic trend, a lot of assumptions about music borrowing in these films have been raised. Borrowing in this case means, the use of already existing music with some few improvements or different composition.

To understand the borrowing concept fully, we could categorize the musical borrowing into three parts. One will be the musical borrowing from existing western music in art and film industry. These were used as temp tracks in the star wars. The second category is the borrowing from Wagner’s operas and their structure. The last category will focus on John Williams borrowing of his own musical pieces in the star wars film to create unity in the film score.

Temp track
George Lucas made quite an impact on the star wars score, with his temp track. Lucas was involved in planning of the star wars musical concepts from the early stages of the first film. His vision was for the film to have a fully symphonic score instead of musique concrete or electronic. Lucas also had an idea to contrast the visual of the star wars film with almost 19th century very romantic music with the aim of reaching the emotional level of the audience. George sought help in coming up with the temp track from a collection of his classical music. 

An example would be the temp track from Gustav Holst, ‘Mars the Bringer of War’ from the album, planets. With the help of this song, we can clearly hear and get the ‘imperial attack’ theme which borrows its rhythmic pattern from ‘mars’. This is however a mere rhythm allusion rather than directly quoting it form the original song. The harmonic and melodic language in the ‘imperial attack’ is an original work of William. 

Another example is the striking resemblance between the main theme of the star wars film and the main theme of Kings Row of Korngold. The first eight notes in either of the pieces are the same. These pieces also have the same orchestration character. This is another instance of borrowing. 

The third example features the cue imitating Stravinsky’s famous The Rites of Spring or La Sacre du Printemps. Taking episode four into consideration, specifically where the droids land on the Tatooine dune sea, it is possible to hear ‘the sacrifice: Mystic Circles of the Young Girls’. The creative borrowing in this case is more than just a mere allusion. It is like a transcription. Notable parts include the two- note flute motif that is repeated and stated over woodwind chords that are dissonant. This is then followed by an orchestra lower register full tutti, mixed with atonality. These two features are notable in the two scores.


Wagner’s opera
The star wars has a lot of similarities to Wagnerian opera. George Lucas, in an interview, admitted to there being many mythic and parallels to Wagner’s ring cycle. The use of leitmotifs, the sound and color of the orchestration and the unity of music are some of the aspects that can be used to show the similarity of both Wagner’s opera and the star wars film. 

A specific example is the comparison of the introduction of ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ in the ring cycle and episode 4 of star wars: A New Hope. This will show you the similarities in the orchestration of both composers.  

Creative borrowing within the film
Music is essential in maintaining unity of the narration. The various episodes of the film need to be connected and in addition, it also has to connect the current film with the subsequent ones. A problem of unity arose when episodes one to three came up, which John Williams solved by self-borrowing.
For instance, the melody of the love theme in episode five: Empire Strikes Back is actually derived from episode four: A New Hope. The opening melodies of these episodes are the same. These themes start with a major tonality.

As can be seen, John Williams applied a number of creative borrowings in the score of star wars and Wagner’s ring. The music in star wars has referenced other music mostly by applying style imitation, rhythmic allusion, using similar principle as leitmotif and emulating some orchestral techniques. The keenness with which this was done shows that it was not a mere allusion practice. The borrowing practice has been carefully done such that it can be seen as John William’s work in every level.
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