John Williams

Use the Holst, Luke!

A closer look in to composer John Williams’ use of Gustav Holst’s and Igor Stravinsky’s Neoclassical works in Star Wars

(headphones recommended)

Since its original release in 1977, the Star Wars film series has been repeatedly dissected in search of the motives and themes that influenced Lucas when he originally wrote the script.  According to Wikipedia these include but are not limited to Hinduism, Qigong, Greek philosophy, Greek mythology, Roman history, Roman mythology, parts of the Abrahamic religions, Confucianism, Shinto, and Taoism.  A fan favorite is the many direct hints at Nazi Germany in his portrayal of the Empire, who wore SS inspired uniforms.  The music, however, was not given due examination.  The score is a component of the film that is most influenced by historical creations.  When John Williams took the job he was given a set of guidelines and in some cases what’s known as a “temp track” which he was to use as a base and inspiration for the song he would later create and put in the film.  Those that have noticed the similarities between Williams’ work and that of his Late Romantic and Neoclassical predecessors Gustav Holst, Igor Stravinsky, Antonin Dvorak, William Walton, and Richard Wagner have often charged him with plagiarism.  Many of the tracks in Star Wars IV: A New Hope are strikingly, almost frighteningly close to their Late Romantic/Neoclassical counterparts.  What is most interesting is not the accusation of Williams as a thief, but the recognition of him as a remixer and reviser and how in the end he produced one of the best and most popular soundtracks of all of film history.

In music, it is difficult to escape certain archetypes that define distinct moods and temperaments.  Everyone has some sort of idea of what a love song, foreboding song, war song, sad song, etc. should be like, so from the beginning the composer is confined to a particular sound.  But when a director says “make it sound like this song” the composer then works in reverse order.  He is trying to create a unique piece that brilliantly complements the screenplay while still retaining the tone and feel of the temp track.  George Lucas was interviewed by famed film critic Leonard Maltin and was asked about Williams and the soundtrack.

George Lucas:  I want a classical score. I want the Korngold kind of feel about this thing. It’s an old-fashioned kind of movie, and I want that grand soundtrack that you used to have in movies. 

Leonard Maltin:  Didn’t you at first want him to use existing classical music?  Is that true?

George Lucas:  No, I had written it to certain pieces of music. I write to music. So, when I’m writing a scene I have the music there and I’m writing it to the music, and then in a lot of cases we’ll use that same music as a temp track.  So there was temp tracks of classical music in the score.  With John you can say, look, you understand the emotion here and the emotion there and he says yeah, yeah, yeah.  Then he will take that and come up with his own composition and his own themes which are uniquely Star Wars and give it that same emotional thrust that was in the classical piece.  He’s very conscientious in trying to get the director’s vision on the screen. 

Williams tried to construct something that would have an idealistic, uplifting yet military flare to it. It is heavy in brass instruments, which he used to play as a student and child.  It is set in the most passionate register of trumpets, horns, and trombones which gives it all a kind of ceremonial air.  The viewer is almost inspired to pat their feet to it, or stand up and salute when they hear it. Williams is not alone in his use of this style, in particular the piece “Mars: Bringer of War” from Holst’s Planets suite.  Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for Gladiator was actually sued by ‘the Holst foundation’ and music publishers ‘J. Curwen & Sons’ who claimed he borrowed directly from “Mars: Bringer of War” and was in violation of copyright laws.  Interestingly, neither Williams nor Zimmer disagree that parts of their score liken back to the Planets suite. Not only did Williams’ score liken to the Planets suite, but also to Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring.  In fact it is about a fifty-fifty split between Holst and Stravinsky inspired songs in the first 1977 soundtrack.  

The examples in the above video are by far the most outstanding examples of his borderline duplications in Star Wars and other film scores.  Williams was never sued by anyone.  As a matter of fact his Star Wars score has brought him an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, two BAFTA Awards, a Grammy Award, and a Saturn Award.  So what makes Williams score so appropriate and beloved.  It is his synthesis of old with new, his adaptation of a general feeling into a specific feeling unique to the scene.  When he composed the score he was truly standing on the shoulders of giants, and he didn’t hesitate to utilize the tried and true techniques of the prime examples at his disposal.  Of these techniques he uses what’s known as a lietmotif, which is a phrase or melodic cell that signifies a character, place, plot element, mood, idea, relationship or other specific part of the film used as a device to mentally anchor certain parts of a film to the soundtrack. Of chief importance for a leitmotif is that it must be strong enough for a listener to latch onto while being flexible enough to undergo variation and development.  For example, Williams uses this with the main theme, and Darth Vader’s theme.  This process was first popularized by Richard Wagner’s operas and is associated with him to this day. The creation of a score in the recognizable Late Romantic style was intended to base the foreign visual display in something familiar and identifiable to the audience. Also, composers of the Late Romantic era attempted to create and evoke particular emotions through their music, so it is no doubt that film composers like Williams, who are also trying to create these same emotions, would pull ideas and concepts from them.  A great example of Late Romantic mood music is the infamous “Morning Mood” by Peer Gynt.

In an interview many years after Star Wars had been released, Williams was asked about the intense emotional responses of the viewers over the past years.  “The response of the audience that you ask about is something that I certainly can’t explain. I wish I could explain that. But maybe the combination of the audio and the visual hitting people in the way that it does must speak to some collective memory that we don’t quite understand. Some memory of Buck Rogers or King Arthur or something earlier in the cultural salts of our brains, memories of lives lived in the past, I don’t know. But it has that kind of resonance—it resonates within us in some past hero’s life that we’ve all lived.”

Ancient Egyptian musicians

The notion of an existence of some sort of primal resonance is abstract to say the least, but somehow that’s what happens musically. That’s what in performance one tries to get with orchestras, and is what’s said at orchestral rehearsals: that it isn’t only the notes, it’s this reaching back into the past. As creatures we don’t know if we have a future, but we certainly share a great past. We remember it, in language and in pre-language, and that’s where music lives—it’s to this area in our souls that it can speak.