WEDNESDAY, January 15, 2020

Across The Stars…

“Across the Stars” is the primary thematic music of Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. It’s actually not clear if this theme is about Anakin or Padmé because it is used for both. You might call it a shared theme. It is used frequently throughout the film and its sequel, Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. Since, Anakin has his own theme, we could consider this a love theme, connected to both of them.

Attack of the Clones

The romance between these two, if you think about it, goes back to a very old theme – star-crossed lovers – and that goes right back to Romeo and Juliet. It is impossible that John Williams did not  know the music to the famous movie Romeo and Juliet from 1968. Is this love song as good as his composition? I don’t think so, though this is quite nice. But these are the arch-typical Shakespearean young lovers:

The same idea, but more than 30 years later…

If you listen carefully you will hear that this is in the same key as the love theme from Romeo and Juliet. Williams is a far more sophisticated composers, so he never stays in a key all the way through without varying something, so before long he moves from D minor to C minor. He is yet another in a line of composers who write tone poems, and this style of writing started a long time ago, eventually competing with the more traditional manner of writing symphonies. This is why his music bears so much resemblance to Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Strauss and on into the 20th and 21st centuries.

Anakin’s Betrayal…

This is yet another example of how Williams puts tone poems together. The same theme is in this piece, but there are just snippets, and it’s hard to hear. Incidentally, Willams is a tuba player. All brass instruments work the same way, so there is no one – and I repeat NO ONE – who writes better for brass. He has a perfect understanding of what is and is not possible for brass players.