Music Album Review: 'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - Original Soundtrack Album (Special Edition)'
Pros: One of the best, if not THE best, scores ever written for film
OVERTURE:
With the unexpected success of Star Wars and its Academy Award-winning score, director George Lucas and composer John Williams were confronted by the question posed to most artists when their creations earn nearly-legendary status: How can you top this?
After all, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (as the first film in the classic Trilogy would soon be renamed) was, in the late 1970s, the top-grossing film of all time, having edged out Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster Jaws in total earnings by the end of 1978. Many fans (including this writer) had seen it at least three or four times at the theaters. (There are many people that saw it dozens of times, even hundreds...and this was before the VCR Revolution of the 1980s took hold!) Kids, and some adults, bought dozens of Kenner's "action figures." Novelizations and published versions of the screenplay became instant best sellers. "May the Force be with you" and "Darth Vader Lives!" were almost national catchphrases.
For Williams, Star Wars: A New Hope was only one of many destined-to-be-classic scores in his Golden Age of composing (1976-1989). In March 1978 he had not one but two Best Score nominations, one for Star Wars, the other for his long-time collaborator Steven Spielberg's UFO classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He was also very much in demand, and between 1977 and 1979 he had scored such films as Superman: The Movie, 1941, The Fury, Dracula, and Jaws 2, just to name a few high- and lowlights of the period. But Star Wars was the John Williams oeuvre that had really caught the listeners' attention, and 20th Century Fox Records' 2-LP original soundtrack album became, until James Horner's Titanic was released in 1997, the top-selling orchestral film score in history.
Thus Lucas and Williams had quite a challenge ahead of them: how to write a new Star Wars project that would live up to everybody's expectations?
Fortunately for the viewers, critics, and listeners, the next Episode of the Star Wars saga not only lived up to those high expectations, it surpassed them; The Empire Strikes Back is considered by most fans as the best of the eight existing Skywalker Saga films, and most of Williams' aficionados list its score among their Top Five best of all time.
THEMES AND VARIATIONS:
Because Lucas had envisioned the two Star Wars Trilogies as one unified tale, he and Williams stressed certain visual and musical elements that give the six movies their signature identities as parts of a greater whole. Visually, Lucas standardized the use of the card that sets each Episode "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." the Star Wars main title and crawl, transitions called "wipes" and "dissolves," and a non-dialog "coda" before the end credits. Musically, Williams achieves the same unifying effect by employing the 20th Century Fox Fanfare (with CinemaScope Extension) by Alfred Newman, the Star Wars theme (a.k.a. Luke Skywalker's theme), and interpolating such existing themes as the Rebel Fanfare and Ben's (a.k.a. "The Force") Theme into the score, while always creating new, exclusive action cues and major themes for characters. (Careful listeners will note that Williams and Lucas will always have both the Force theme and the Rebel Fanfare present at the end title music; this adherence to pattern is a tip of the hat to the Saturday afternoon serials that inspired not only the Star Wars trilogies but the Indiana Jones films, too.)
Although Luke's Theme from is heard throughout the Empire score, it's no longer the driving force of this second entry of the series. Rather, Episode V is dominated by one of the three major new themes Williams introduces in this more nuanced and darker film: The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme). Introduced subtly as part of the opening sequence in Main Title/Ice Planet Hoth (Track 2, Disc 1) but later stated more boldly when we first see the Imperial Fleet assembling in deep space, the March replaces the still-sinister but somewhat low-wattage Imperial motif from A New Hope. As film historian Michael Montessino writes in the liner notes for this Special Edition set, the new march is "a dark, but fun musical depiction of the might of the Empire which serves as a malevolent 'Hail to the Chief' for its principal figure, Darth Vader."
Acting as a philosophical and musical counterpoint to the dark, almost jeering Imperial March is Williams' "benign Yoda's Theme, representing the wisdom of the Jedi Master." Gentle, warm, and even mischievous, this theme will not only recur throughout The Empire Strikes Back but waft forward into Episode VI and be quoted in the score of Attack of the Clones.
The third major new theme is a romantic composition for Han Solo and Princess Leia, a gorgeous and expansive melody that follows their budding relationship throughout the film.
Additionally, there are themes for the droids, Boba Fett (a feared masked bounty hunter who works for both Vader and Han's nemesis, Jabba the Hutt), and Lando Calrissian's outpost on the gas planet Bespin.
THE ORCHESTRA: Once again, Lucas and Williams (who took over the producer's reins for this soundtrack album) chose the world-famous London Symphony Orchestra. More than half of the orchestra's members had performed the music for A New Hope, and even though the shading of this score is darker and uses more synthesizer effects and slightly different orchestrations, the quality of the LSO's performance remains consistently good.
THE SPECIAL EDITION: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: The Special Edition was released in February of 1997, several weeks after the premiere of the previous Episode, A New Hope, partly to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Star Wars saga, and partly to showcase some of executive producer Lucas' tweaks to the special effects shots and scenes he had never been happy with since the release of Episode V in May of 1980. Most of the changes were cosmetic in nature: an improved version of the Wampa sequence here, cleaned-up mattes there, and the inclusion of a Lambda-class Imperial shuttle over there, surely nothing as terribly controversial (to some fans, anyway) as the changes made to A New Hope.
As for the score and the soundtrack album, there were no additional cues or retrograde "introductions" of music from Return of the Jedi as in A New Hope during the restored Jabba-Han confrontation , but the Special Edition 2-CD set does have the distinction of being the first complete version of the Empire score released to the public.
For some bizarre reason, it wasn't until 1993's The Star Wars Trilogy: The Soundtrack Anthology that a decent edition of Empire's Williams/LSO soundtrack album became available on compact disc. Polydor's first stab at doing the original 2-LP album was disastrous; touted as a Super Saver edition, The Empire Strikes Back's first one-disc version contained less than half of the two-record set...and in such a disorganized presentation that it boggles the mind. Instead of starting the album with Star Wars (Main Title), those wacky fellows at Polydor decided to place The Imperial March on Track 1, relegating the music that is heard at the beginning of the film way back to the final track!
With the unexpected success of Star Wars and its Academy Award-winning score, director George Lucas and composer John Williams were confronted by the question posed to most artists when their creations earn nearly-legendary status: How can you top this?
After all, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (as the first film in the classic Trilogy would soon be renamed) was, in the late 1970s, the top-grossing film of all time, having edged out Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster Jaws in total earnings by the end of 1978. Many fans (including this writer) had seen it at least three or four times at the theaters. (There are many people that saw it dozens of times, even hundreds...and this was before the VCR Revolution of the 1980s took hold!) Kids, and some adults, bought dozens of Kenner's "action figures." Novelizations and published versions of the screenplay became instant best sellers. "May the Force be with you" and "Darth Vader Lives!" were almost national catchphrases.
For Williams, Star Wars: A New Hope was only one of many destined-to-be-classic scores in his Golden Age of composing (1976-1989). In March 1978 he had not one but two Best Score nominations, one for Star Wars, the other for his long-time collaborator Steven Spielberg's UFO classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He was also very much in demand, and between 1977 and 1979 he had scored such films as Superman: The Movie, 1941, The Fury, Dracula, and Jaws 2, just to name a few high- and lowlights of the period. But Star Wars was the John Williams oeuvre that had really caught the listeners' attention, and 20th Century Fox Records' 2-LP original soundtrack album became, until James Horner's Titanic was released in 1997, the top-selling orchestral film score in history.
Thus Lucas and Williams had quite a challenge ahead of them: how to write a new Star Wars project that would live up to everybody's expectations?
Fortunately for the viewers, critics, and listeners, the next Episode of the Star Wars saga not only lived up to those high expectations, it surpassed them; The Empire Strikes Back is considered by most fans as the best of the eight existing Skywalker Saga films, and most of Williams' aficionados list its score among their Top Five best of all time.
THEMES AND VARIATIONS:
Because Lucas had envisioned the two Star Wars Trilogies as one unified tale, he and Williams stressed certain visual and musical elements that give the six movies their signature identities as parts of a greater whole. Visually, Lucas standardized the use of the card that sets each Episode "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." the Star Wars main title and crawl, transitions called "wipes" and "dissolves," and a non-dialog "coda" before the end credits. Musically, Williams achieves the same unifying effect by employing the 20th Century Fox Fanfare (with CinemaScope Extension) by Alfred Newman, the Star Wars theme (a.k.a. Luke Skywalker's theme), and interpolating such existing themes as the Rebel Fanfare and Ben's (a.k.a. "The Force") Theme into the score, while always creating new, exclusive action cues and major themes for characters. (Careful listeners will note that Williams and Lucas will always have both the Force theme and the Rebel Fanfare present at the end title music; this adherence to pattern is a tip of the hat to the Saturday afternoon serials that inspired not only the Star Wars trilogies but the Indiana Jones films, too.)
Although Luke's Theme from is heard throughout the Empire score, it's no longer the driving force of this second entry of the series. Rather, Episode V is dominated by one of the three major new themes Williams introduces in this more nuanced and darker film: The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme). Introduced subtly as part of the opening sequence in Main Title/Ice Planet Hoth (Track 2, Disc 1) but later stated more boldly when we first see the Imperial Fleet assembling in deep space, the March replaces the still-sinister but somewhat low-wattage Imperial motif from A New Hope. As film historian Michael Montessino writes in the liner notes for this Special Edition set, the new march is "a dark, but fun musical depiction of the might of the Empire which serves as a malevolent 'Hail to the Chief' for its principal figure, Darth Vader."
Acting as a philosophical and musical counterpoint to the dark, almost jeering Imperial March is Williams' "benign Yoda's Theme, representing the wisdom of the Jedi Master." Gentle, warm, and even mischievous, this theme will not only recur throughout The Empire Strikes Back but waft forward into Episode VI and be quoted in the score of Attack of the Clones.
The third major new theme is a romantic composition for Han Solo and Princess Leia, a gorgeous and expansive melody that follows their budding relationship throughout the film.
Additionally, there are themes for the droids, Boba Fett (a feared masked bounty hunter who works for both Vader and Han's nemesis, Jabba the Hutt), and Lando Calrissian's outpost on the gas planet Bespin.
THE ORCHESTRA: Once again, Lucas and Williams (who took over the producer's reins for this soundtrack album) chose the world-famous London Symphony Orchestra. More than half of the orchestra's members had performed the music for A New Hope, and even though the shading of this score is darker and uses more synthesizer effects and slightly different orchestrations, the quality of the LSO's performance remains consistently good.
THE SPECIAL EDITION: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: The Special Edition was released in February of 1997, several weeks after the premiere of the previous Episode, A New Hope, partly to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Star Wars saga, and partly to showcase some of executive producer Lucas' tweaks to the special effects shots and scenes he had never been happy with since the release of Episode V in May of 1980. Most of the changes were cosmetic in nature: an improved version of the Wampa sequence here, cleaned-up mattes there, and the inclusion of a Lambda-class Imperial shuttle over there, surely nothing as terribly controversial (to some fans, anyway) as the changes made to A New Hope.
As for the score and the soundtrack album, there were no additional cues or retrograde "introductions" of music from Return of the Jedi as in A New Hope during the restored Jabba-Han confrontation , but the Special Edition 2-CD set does have the distinction of being the first complete version of the Empire score released to the public.
For some bizarre reason, it wasn't until 1993's The Star Wars Trilogy: The Soundtrack Anthology that a decent edition of Empire's Williams/LSO soundtrack album became available on compact disc. Polydor's first stab at doing the original 2-LP album was disastrous; touted as a Super Saver edition, The Empire Strikes Back's first one-disc version contained less than half of the two-record set...and in such a disorganized presentation that it boggles the mind. Instead of starting the album with Star Wars (Main Title), those wacky fellows at Polydor decided to place The Imperial March on Track 1, relegating the music that is heard at the beginning of the film way back to the final track!
Varese Sarabande's The Empire Strikes Back Orchestral Suite is a vast improvement; it not only contains the Suite itself (The Imperial March, Yoda's Theme, Han Solo & the Princess, and The Asteroid Field), but producer George Korngold and conductor Charles Gerhardt also included much of the movie's cues, including the 20th Century Fox Fanfare, an added touch that would later be carried over into the Soundtrack Anthology's original score reissues and this Special Edition.
But Gerhardt is not John Williams, and the National Philharmonic isn't the LSO, so fans were thrilled when they finally had a corrected and expanded Empire "original soundtrack" on Disc 2 of the Anthology boxed set. Yet, even though the sequencing had been corrected so the music would follow the action of the film, it still replicated some of the original 2-LP's cut-and-paste approach to some tracks, and some cues were lost in the process of fixes to other tracks. In short, there was more music in the Anthology's "expanded" edition, but it was still not the complete Empire score.
This Special Edition is the definitive version of Williams' magnificent score for the middle film of the Classic Trilogy, containing every note heard on the final film...and then some! As in the previous 2-CD set of the series, its 23 tracks (11 on Disc 1, 12 on Disc 2) are arranged in the order in which they appear in the film -- even one cue (Aboard the Executor, part of Track 4, Disc 1) that was recorded but never used.
PACKAGING, LINER NOTES & UNRELEASED MATERIAL:
RCA Victor/BMG Classics released two versions of this 2-CD set. The more expensive edition ($29.99) has the CDs stored in pockets in a booklet-style package, with a booklet of liner notes in the middle. The CDs themselves are silvery with a laser-etched Rebel X-Wing approaching the Death Star. The cheaper version ($23.99 in 2000) is a more traditional Slimline jewel box, with those detestable flip covers that wear out after a while. The "deluxe" cover features the Special Edition logo (silver for The Empire Strikes Back) in the middle of a black background, with The Empire Strikes Back title logo below and the credit Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams along the bottom, both in white against the black background. The covers for Slimline editions vary. Some merely duplicate the artwork of the "deluxe" edition, while others feature the Drew Struzan poster art commissioned for the 20th Anniversary release in February of 1997.
Both "deluxe" and Slimline versions have liner notes by Michael Montessino, who explains each track's musical structure and places it into the context of the film. (I particularly enjoy this feature!)
Listeners who have bought the now-hard-to-find Soundtrack Anthology will be amazed by the amount of additional musical material that is marked as "previously unreleased," even though Disc 2 of that 1993 edition of the Empire score contained many cues that had not been previously heard on any format. Some tracks worth noting are:
The Wampa's Lair/Vision of Obi-Wan/Snowspeeders Take Flight (Track 3, Disc 1)
The Imperial Probe/Aboard the Executor (Track 4, Disc 1)
Betrayal at Bespin (Track 7, Disc 2)
Deal With the Dark Lord (Track 8, Disc 2)
THE BOTTOM LINE: IS THIS ALBUM WORTH GETTING?
Many fans think The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the eight current Star Wars Saga Episodes and cite Williams' score as one of the elements that give the film its rank in the canon. Clearly it is no mere rehash of old material -- either story-wise or music-wise -- for a run-of-the-mill movie sequel.
Yes, the main characters from A New Hope are present, as are their themes, but the movie has evolved to a new level of complexity and turbulence, and Williams' canny way of taking familiar themes such as Luke's (the "Star Wars theme") and "The Force" from A New Hope and blending them seamlessly with new material is nothing short of magic. Williams' manner of taking a theme such as The Imperial March and tweaking it so that is brash and strident in one scene, tense yet pensive in another is just further proof that Steven Spielberg knew what he was doing when he recommended "Johnny" to Lucas for the job of composing the Star Wars scores.
There are, of course, various "covers" of the Empire score, including the Gerhardt/NPO recording of Williams' Orchestral Suite, which is a wonderful album on its own merits. None, however, compare to this amazing 2-disc set as far as content and quality are concerned. It's definitely a "must get" album for fans of good film scores and symphonic music.
There are, of course, various "covers" of the Empire score, including the Gerhardt/NPO recording of Williams' Orchestral Suite, which is a wonderful album on its own merits. None, however, compare to this amazing 2-disc set as far as content and quality are concerned. It's definitely a "must get" album for fans of good film scores and symphonic music.
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