December 18, 2015 has come and gone, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens has opened to rave reviews. Praise has been heaped upon just about everyone involved, and that includes John Williams' fabulous score, a voice for the franchise which makes us feel right at home from the first blast of brass to the final fading tones. For this seventh outing, Williams, quite rightfully, takes a cue from director J.J. Abrams and gives us a score rich in nostalgia, a wonderful blend of the old and new, and manages to produce one of the finer scores in the series (which is saying something). Episode III, which was assumed to be his last visit to a galaxy far, far away, was a disappointingly weak score to end such an august series with, and so it is with great joy that The Force Awakens manages to be a far more satisfying work.
Necessarily, the score plays like Williams' greatest hits. Revisiting the orchestrations and motivic ideas which made Star Wars what it was. Cues like "Rey Meets BB-8" are brimming with the magic of Hook, and then there's "Scherzo for X-Wings" which reminds us of a certain scherzo from years ago. Even the new themes, which shine with an originality and nuance which is hard to find in modern film music, feel like natural evolutions of a musical palette that has defined the series from the beginning. While certain parts of the score work better than others, the score feel cohesive in a way that Revenge of the Sith did not. While cues such as "Anakin's Dark Deeds" were indeed powerful, they felt out of place with the frenetic brass writing of the action cues, and then other moments such as "Padme's Rumination's" and "General Grievous" simply felt like missteps. Fortunately, here there are no moments that feel like miscalculations.
Williams' brings his familiar bag of tricks to the proceedings, staccato trumpet parts, bold horn lines, and fast, ascending string lines. His familiar talent to make you feel like the music is busier than it actually is works well here, bringing an exciting edge to cues like "Attack on the Jakku Village" and the aforementioned "Scherzo for X-Wings." While the new themes are certainly well done, I am always in awe of Williams' dense, contrapuntal, action cues. Each manages to have a distinct flavor, although a repeated motif of 3/4 + 5/8 (first heard in "I Can Fly Anything") lends a certain Goldsmithian flair to the proceedings. The standout cue is "Scherzo for X-Wings" which showcases another of Williams' talents: integrating formal processes into his own style. At times this scherzo employs canonic and fugal techniques on the familiar Star Wars theme. Such compositional integrity is hard to come by in modern film music, and cues such as this cement Williams as the real deal.
It's a blending of these familiar concepts with new material which make this score shine so brightly. In the same way that Williams' hinted at Vader's redemption in Empire by structuring his melody around a broken major triad, he hints at the conflicted nature of Kylo Ren. His theme, a descending minor motif, takes a sharp upward turn before settling, as if hinting at Kylo's "call to the light." In the same way that he managed to capture childlike curiosity and impending evil in "Anakin's Theme," "Rey's Theme" captures the yearning need for answers and the natural curiosity of the character. The motifs are wondrously able to capture different, sometimes contradictory, character traits at once to the great service of the film. Even Snoke's material, which hints at the Emperor's theme, feels different despite the similar musical techniques. A wonderful way of referencing older material in a new way. Of course old favorites are welcome too, such as the Rebel Fanfare in "Follow Me" and Han Solo and the Princess in "Han and Leia." However, compared to these masterstrokes the "March of the Resistance" feels a bit clunky, and fails to match wits with some of Williams' more fully developed marches.
Still, despite any shortcomings, the score manages to both fit naturally into the Star Wars canon and sit beautifully on its own. It's not loud, but instead lets a great depth of compositional integrity and ingenuity speak out. It's important to remember that "loud" and "strong" are different things, and despite a quiet disposition, Williams' music speaks much more clearly and articulately than most of his contemporaries. *****
