Favorite Movie Music: "Princess Leia's Theme"

One of the best things about fantasy and science-fiction films is the awesome soundtracks that go with them. (In fact, too often the soundtrack is the only good thing about certain fantasy and sci-fi films.) As both a fantasy/sci-fi fan and a music fan, movie soundtracks have always represented a geek sweet spot for me. I'm not ashamed to admit that I carry around a playlist of my favorite movie music on my iPod, and listen to it frequently. So during the next few weeks I'm going to be posting about some of the best moments from movie soundtracks over the years.

And of course, the undisputed king of movie soundtracks is John Williams. Even 35 years later, I can remember, as clearly as if it was last week, being a 9-year-old boy sitting in a darkened theater in 1977, shoving a sticky fistful of buttered popcorn into my face, and being almost blown out of my seat by the first, stirring chord of the Star Wars opening theme. (Still, in my opinion, the greatest movie theme song of all time.) How much of the unprecedented crossover success of that film was due to the amazing music? It's impossible to say, but it's equally impossible to imagine Star Wars with any other sound.

One of the reasons John Williams rises above the average film-score composer is his classical approach. Even at their best, most film composers are doing no more than a glorified version of what those olde-tyme pianists used to do in the silent-film moviehouses: Watch what's happening onscreen and come up with some incidental music to go along with it. If it's a love scene, play some sweet, romantic music. If it's a fight, play something with lots of staccato punches. If it's scary, play something tense and suspenseful. And that's it; no greater vision is involved.

Williams, on the other hand, is a real composer, who arranges his soundtracks according to the rules of symphonic structure. His music is meant to tell a story on its own, without needing any reference to what's happening onscreen — which might be why it holds up to repeated listening, for example on a geeky iPod playlist. To a classical music fan, his influences are clear: Beethoven, Mahler, and Holst, in particular. That opening chord of Star Wars is in many ways the spiritual descendant of the one-two punch that opens Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony: For the listener, it's a slap across the face from an entire orchestra that makes you shut up, stop what you're doing, and pay attention.

Every one of Williams' soundtracks, though, also includes moments of tenderness. Everyone knows the main theme from Star Wars, but check out the less well-known "Princess Leia's Theme." It's a perfectly composed romantic melody. Note how Williams introduces a simple, plaintive theme with a single, masculine trumpet (perhaps representing lonely Luke Skywalker, stuck on his farm on Tatooine), then echoes it with a solo, feminine flute, for the Princess. After this intertwining of the two instruments, the theme is taken up by the string section, who give it some added, yearning romance, and finally by the entire orchestra, who turn it into a stirring and tragic love song.

Unfortunately, the love story that Williams was writing for doesn't actually exist in the movie Star Wars (because George Lucas shied away from it, but that's a topic for another blog post). So you can consider "Princess Leia's Theme" as music for the greatest space-opera love story that never was.